i
Utah Valley University
Mainstreaming Dual Language Immersion:
The Utah Model for Replicable and Sustainable Language Education
A project submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Education
in
Curriculum and Instruction
by
Jamie Lynn Davis Leite
June 2013
ii
Utah Valley University
Graduate Committee Approval
of a research project submitted by
Jamie Lynn Davis Leite
This project has been read by each member of the following graduate
committee and by majority vote has been found to be satisfactory.
_______________________ ________________________
Date Dr. Raquel Cook, Chair
_______________________ ________________________
Date Dr. Baldomero Lago
_______________________ ________________________
Date Dr. Sirpa Grierson
iii
Acknowledgements
Two years ago, when I decided to begin a master’s degree while working as a middle
school English teacher, I had no idea that a string of serendipitous conversations at Utah
Valley University would drastically change the trajectory of my career and life. In Dr.
Brian Waite’s eye-opening ESL class, I learned about a field called dual language
immersion. The following semester, a conversation with Dr. Raquel Cook about language
education led to her becoming my project chair, faithful cheerleader, and dear friend.
Later, a discussion with Dr. Baldomero Lago led to an opportunity for me to interview
Gregg Roberts, triggering a series of events that culminated in me being hired by the
Utah State Office of Education as the Portuguese Director of dual language immersion. I
am deeply indebted to each of these mentors for believing in me and opening doors to
opportunities that I didn’t know existed. I am also thankful for the mentors who came
before them—Dr. Sirpa Grierson at BYU and KathiJo Smith at Provo Canyon School,
who both challenged and stretched me during my six years as a classroom teacher.
I am grateful for my parents—my dad for always valuing education and my mom for
telling me I was a writer from the day I put pen to paper. I’m thankful for my siblings—
Jay, Julie, Jaclyn, and Josh—who have pushed me to be the best I can be. I am especially
appreciative of my sister Julie, who has given me the confidence to be myself without
apologies. I feel beyond blessed to have married my husband, Leo, who has supported me
in all of my educational and professional endeavors for the past 10 years. He has never
acted as though his career were more important than mine, but has instead leaned in at
home as an equal partner in co-parenting and cleaning. I am grateful to my six-year-old
daughter, Isabella, who is the reason I fought for Portuguese dual language immersion in
the first place. She rewards me every day by celebrating the opportunity to learn a second
language in the first grade. I am thankful to my four-year-old son, Nicholas, who has
patiently listened to innumerable phone calls about Portuguese immersion. Finally, I am
grateful to the professors and classmates at Utah Valley University who have inspired me
every Tuesday night for the past two years—especially my friends Katie, Brook, Natalie,
and Ashlee for keeping me company on this journey.
Finally, I would like to thank the many people who have made Utah dual language
immersion possible. Their names are included throughout these pages and I applaud them
for their dedication and commitment to providing Utah’s students with opportunities for
language learning. I am especially grateful to all those who participated in this project.
Special thanks to Sandra Talbot for giving me the idea of writing this history. Thank you
to Dr. Diane Tedick whose course at the University of Minnesota provided the research
framework for this project. Many thanks to Dr. Myriam Met, Ann Tollefson, Greg
Duncan, Ofelia Wade, Sandra Talbot, Kaye Murdock, and the many other members of
the Utah DLI team who welcomed me into their world with open arms. Thanks to Lili
Bueno for embarking on this Portuguese adventure with me. Most importantly, I offer my
most heartfelt thanks and appreciation to Gregg Roberts, who gave me the opportunity of
a lifetime when he hired me as Portuguese director. He has quickly become my trusted
advisor, mentor, and friend. I deeply admire him and credit him as the architect of the
structure that is Utah dual language immersion.
iv
Abstract
In 2008, Utah became the first state to legislate funding for the implementation of
dual language immersion programs across the state. With nearly 100 programs and
20,000 students enrolled in Chinese, French, Portuguese, and Spanish immersion in 2013,
Utah is leading the movement for mainstreamed dual language immersion. Many other
state and local educational agencies are looking to Utah for guidance on how to create
and sustain programs; however, up to this point, no one has sufficiently documented the
movement to provide access to the historical background and curricular framework of
Utah’s programs. To better understand Utah’s success, this project details the history of
dual language immersion in the state with specific emphasis on the last decade and the
development of Utah’s 50/50 state model. Using information obtained in interviews,
collaboration, observations, state documents, and meetings, the project provides a
narrative regarding the key events and people in the history and defines the parameters of
the state model with a justification for the decisions made in the state. Also included
within the project is a case study on the implementation of Portuguese as the newest
immersion language in the state. The project offers a consolidated and definitive
document regarding the official state model from the perspective of those who created the
dual language immersion program.
v
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... iii
Abstract ............................................................................................................................. iv
Chapter 1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 1
Problem ....................................................................................................................................... 3
Purpose ....................................................................................................................................... 4
Questions .................................................................................................................................... 4
Methods ...................................................................................................................................... 5
Limitations .................................................................................................................................. 5
Definition of Terms ..................................................................................................................... 5
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 7
Chapter 2 Literature Review ........................................................................................... 8
Bilingualism ................................................................................................................................ 8
Language Education .................................................................................................................. 10
Dual Language Education ......................................................................................................... 13
Effectiveness of Dual Language and Immersion Education ..................................................... 19
Closing the Achievement Gap ................................................................................................... 22
Implementation of Dual Language Immersion .......................................................................... 25
Literacy ..................................................................................................................................... 27
Biliteracy .................................................................................................................................. 32
Chapter 3 Methodology .................................................................................................. 39
Research .................................................................................................................................... 39
Design and Development ........................................................................................................... 40
Validation ................................................................................................................................. 43
vi
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 44
Chapter 4 ......................................................................................................................... 45
History of Utah Dual Language Immersion ................................................................. 45
The Foundation of Utah Immersion .......................................................................................... 46
Gregg Roberts and Granite School District ............................................................................... 51
State Involvement ...................................................................................................................... 55
2008–2009 Planning Year ......................................................................................................... 61
National Influence ..................................................................................................................... 67
Staffing the Programs ................................................................................................................ 69
State Launch .............................................................................................................................. 72
The Utah Model ......................................................................................................................... 81
Utah’s Dual Language Immersion Team ................................................................................... 91
National Support for Immersion ................................................................................................ 97
The Expansion of Utah Immersion ............................................................................................ 99
Portuguese Case Study ................................................................................................. 103
Finding Portuguese Materials .................................................................................................. 105
Publicity .................................................................................................................................. 108
Portuguese STARTALK .......................................................................................................... 110
Teacher Recruitment ................................................................................................................ 112
Current Landscape of Portuguese DLI .................................................................................... 115
Future of Portuguese Immersion ............................................................................................. 117
Chapter 5 Summary and Discussion ........................................................................... 120
References ...................................................................................................................... 123
vii
Appendix A: Sample Lesson Plans .............................................................................. 133
Appendix B: Português de A a Z Literacy Materials ................................................. 145
Appendix C: Portuguese Curriculum Map.................................................................157
viii
List of Tables
Page
1. Dual Language Immersion Program Growth in Utah 78
List of Figures
1.
2.
Program Models Comparison (Thomas & Collier, 2012, p. 93)
Dual Language Immersion Program Growth in Utah
24
78
3.
4.
List of Participating DLI Schools 2013–2014
Utah Dual Language Immersion Instructional Time: Grades 1–3
79
83
5. Utah Dual Language Immersion Instructional Time: Grades 4–5 83
6. Utah Dual Language Immersion Instructional Time: Grade 6 84
7. Utah Dual Language Immersion Proficiency Targets Projections 85
8. Utah Dual Language Immersion Sample Student Proficiency Report 86
9. Utah Dual Language Immersion Assessments Based on the ACTFL
Scale
88
10. Utah Dual Language Immersion State Team 92
11. F-CAP Consortium 2013–2014 98
12. Utah Dual Language Immersion Model Secondary Course
Sequencing
100
1
Chapter 1
“Monolingualism is the illiteracy of the 21st Century.”
Gregg Roberts, World Language and Dual Language Immersion Specialist,
Utah State Office of Education
Introduction
While living in Brazil from 2003 to 2004, I met many Brazilians who seemed
trapped in a life of menial labor and minimal pay juxtaposed with inflated food and rental
costs. The disparity between the rich and poor was characterized by the fact that the
wealthiest 10% of the Brazilian people possessed nearly 50% of the country’s total
income (Brazil – Poverty and Wealth, 2000). Faced with a severely broken public
education system, the top 10% fled to successful private schools while the rest of the
children were left with inefficient schools marked by low attendance, grade repetition,
and steady dropout rates (Cardoso & Verner, 2007).
One of the top educational priorities of Brazil’s private schools has always been
English instruction. Like many around the world, Brazilians have long seen the
acquisition of the English language as a door to economic advantage and intellectual
power, leading to better jobs and a more stable economy. On the other hand, Americans
have been seen as lackadaisical in the acquisition of languages other than English. For
many years, the political and economical strength of the United States allowed
monolingual Americans to work and travel around the world with ease.
2
The recent decline of the American economy has been countered with the rise of
the Brazilian economy. The United States currently has an external debt that is nearly 50
times that of Brazil’s (The World Factbook, 2013), though the sizes of the countries are
comparable. The American dollar that was worth nearly 4 reais (Brazilian dollars) in
2003 is now worth 2 reais. The growing power of many countries around the world, such
as Brazil and China, has opened the eyes of many Americans to the need for international
understanding and experience. Now many Americans recognize that their children will
need a second language to be competitive in today’s global economy and competitive job
market.
While international education proponents have long campaigned for an American
curriculum designed to teach about other cultures and languages (Genesee, 2003), the
U.S. economic recession has encouraged government agencies and businesses to also
recognize the value of bilingualism (Wimmer, 2011). In some states, their money is now
available to support what many educators have worked for through grassroots efforts
across the United States: language immersion programs for American children beginning
in kindergarten and first grade, with the potential of continuing through twelfth grade. At
the forefront of this movement is the state of Utah.
By mainstreaming immersion programs, Utah is helping children reach beyond
our borders by immersing them in two languages, two cultures, and thus, two
perspectives. It has only been four years since Utah legislators secured the money for
immersion education and the state governor set a goal that by 2015, Utah would have
30,000 students enrolled in 100 language immersion programs across the state (Utah
Dual Language Immersion, 2011). Currently, the Utah State Office of Education is
3
poised to achieve this goal one year earlier than initially anticipated. Since 2009, the
National Security Agency has awarded over $700,000 through STARTALK grants to the
Utah State Office of Education for the development of Chinese and Portuguese language
immersion programs. One-third of the United States’ Mandarin Chinese immersion
programs in public elementary schools operate in Utah. Governments around the world
are participating in Utah programs by sending teachers here to work. According to Dr.
Myriam Met, former director of the National Foreign Language Center, “Utah is leading
the nation in immersion education” (Stuart, 2010, p.1).
Problem
In recent years, interest in dual language immersion programs has exploded across
the United States. As the first state to legislate a state initiative with funding for programs,
Utah is leading the charge to create a replicable and sustainable model for 50/50 dual
language immersion. States from around the nation have flocked to Utah to discover why
language immersion programs are thriving in a landlocked state not usually known for its
diversity. In 2012, after working with Utah for over a year, Delaware became the second
state to create an initiative for language immersion. Other state and local educational
agencies have also looked to Utah for guidance on how to create and sustain programs.
With much work to be done, there has not been the time or manpower to document the
movement and provide access to the historical background and curricular framework of
Utah’s programs. In order to better understand Utah’s success, it is vital to record the
inner workings and development of dual language immersion programs within the state,
particularly over the last decade.
4
Purpose
The purpose of this creative project is to provide a history of the conception and
development of Utah’s dual language immersion programs. Included in the history is a
chronological description of the beginnings of immersion in Utah to the current landscape
of immersion, including a case study on the implementation of Portuguese as a new
immersion language. The project serves to represent the perspectives and viewpoints of
the developers of the program with a rationale for the decisions they have made
throughout the establishment of the state model. The policies and strategies that are
identified as successful through this project are available for the use of future dual
language immersion program developers in any country, state, or district.
Questions
In the process of defining a narrative timeline and chronological history of Utah’s
dual language immersion initiative and program, the following questions are addressed:
• What specific events led to a state dual language immersion initiative in Utah?
• How have the parameters of the state model been established?
• Who have been the significant players in Utah dual language immersion and
what have been their individual contributions?
• What events have been pivotal in steering the progression of Utah’s dual
language immersion programs?
• How is a new language program (i.e., Portuguese) implemented as part of the
Utah state model?
5
Methods
To create this history, it was crucial that key players in the history be involved. In
the course of writing, Gregg Roberts, World Language and Dual Language Immersion
Specialist for the Utah State Office of Education, was formally interviewed on several
occasions. He also provided continuous consultation on the information included here.
Official, structured interviews were conducted with an additional eight dual language
immersion team members. Informal collaboration took place with administrators,
specialists, teachers, researchers, and professors from January 2012 through April 2013.
Beyond those people explicitly named in this project, I have collaborated with
innumerable colleagues through countless meetings over the course of the last year.
Limitations
This project is from the perspective of supporters of the program. While some
critiques are included here, the purpose of this project has been to compile a history from
members of the state team responsible for developing the state model. The objective of
this project is to represent the viewpoints of these state team members, so opposing
viewpoints have not been developed. Also, some information that was considered to be
timely or confidential may not have been disclosed.
Definition of Terms
For purposes of clarification, the following definitions of terms will be employed
throughout the scope of this project. These definitions will be developed further in
Chapter 2 of this project.
6
• Target language – the language of content instruction in an immersion
program; sometimes referred to as the immersion language or L2, meaning
second language
• Native language – the language first spoken by a group or individual;
sometimes referred to as L1, meaning first language
• Dual Language Immersion (DLI) – a language education model dedicated to
additive bilingualism and biliteracy with a minimum of 50% of the daily
subject matter taught in the target language at the elementary level
• One-way immersion – a form of dual language immersion in which majority
language speakers learn a foreign or world language
• Two-way immersion – a form of dual language immersion which pairs
balanced numbers of majority speakers with native speakers of the minority
language with time divided between the two languages
Because of Utah’s broad range of dual language immersion programs, including both
one-way and two-way models, the state uses the following nomenclature when defining
its dual language immersion programs, which may or may not be consistent with the
vocabulary used outside of the state.
• 50/50 model – a partial immersion model in which half the instructional day
is taught in English and the other half is taught in the target language
• 90/10 model – a full immersion model in which the early years of the program
are dedicated primarily to the target language, with the gradual introduction of
English instruction over the course of the program
7
• One-teacher model – a language immersion model in which the same teacher
provides instruction in both English and the target language
• Two-teacher model – a language immersion model in which students split
their content instruction between an English-speaking teacher and a target-language-
speaking teacher
Conclusion
As our world becomes more and more interconnected, the United States’
economy and job market require the use of more than one language. The goal of dual
language immersion education is threefold: “bilingualism/biliteracy, cross-cultural
understanding, and high academic achievement for all” (Palmer, 2007, p. 752). As a key
player in the dual language immersion movement, Utah is creating programs for various
languages in schools across the state. Around the country, state and local educational
agencies are interested in replicating Utah’s success for implementing dual language
immersion programs on a state-wide level. For this reason, documenting the historical
development of Utah’s programs will serve to inform and explain the development of
Utah’s dual language immersion model.
8
Chapter 2
Literature Review
To achieve the dual language education goal of “additive bilingualism and
biliteracy and cultural pluralism” (Tedick, Christian, and Fortune, 2011, p. 1), Utah’s
dual language immersion programs have been founded upon research in the areas of
second language acquisition and immersion education—topics to be addressed in the
following pages.
Bilingualism
A bilingual person is defined as someone who uses two or more languages on a
daily basis. Though more than half of the world’s population is considered bilingual, only
twenty percent of Americans fit the same definition (Grosjean, 1989 and 2012). Genesee
(2003) shows evidence that human infants are biologically capable of acquiring two
languages as normally as they are one. Cummins (1981) states that “the bilingual is not
the sum of two complete or incomplete monolinguals; rather he or she has a unique and
specific linguistic configuration” (p. 3). As explained by Bialystok and Hakuta (1994),
the knowledge of two languages is greater than the sum of its parts. This unique
configuration gives bilinguals cognitive flexibility, an intellectual advantage that involves
enhanced abilities to solve problems and process abstract information (Bialystok,
Shenfield, & Codd, 2000).
Additional languages beyond a person’s native language can be acquired
simultaneously (at the same time) or sequentially (one after another). Additive
bilingualism views the acquisition of the second language (L2) as a positive,
complementary process, while subtractive bilingualism sees the same process as a
9
competition (Lee, 1996). Throughout the United States, the teaching of English to native
speakers of other languages has been a “phenomenon of ‘subtractive bilingualism’”
(coined by Wallace Lambert) (Wong-Fillmore, 1991, p. 323). With a traditional emphasis
placed on assimilation, many Americans value English and see other languages as
threatening. Dabbling in European languages such as French and German may be
considered an intellectual pursuit; however, Spanish speakers have often been the target
of criticism and prejudice.
The benefits of being bilingual are numerous and are supported by over forty
years of research. Fully proficient bilinguals exhibit increased problem solving skills,
pattern recognition, and divergent thinking, with greater cognitive flexibility and
enhanced sensitivity to verbal and non-verbal cues (Tedick, 2012b). Research by
Bialystok (2008) shows that bilingual children are able to solve problems with conflicting
or misleading information at an earlier age and more quickly than monolinguals,
demonstrating greater executive control and enhanced inhibitory control (as cited in
Tedick, 2012b). According to Cenoz and Valencia (1994) and Sanz (2000), bilingual
students also acquire a third or fourth language with more ease (as cited in Tedick,
2012b).
Genesee (2003) states that a renaissance in language learning is occurring due to
the personal, socio-cultural, economic, and political incentives that bilingualism provides.
One of the most compelling reasons for learning a second language is the globalization of
business and commerce. Industries are moving their offices to other countries and
working in cities around the world. Individuals move voluntarily and are studying or
working abroad more frequently. Electronic communication through the Internet has
10
increased the need for speakers of more than one language (Genesee, 2003). Met (2004)
states that despite a growing population of English speakers, it is estimated that only one-fourth
of the world’s population is competent in English. Beyond economic reasons, she
states that language learning is important for diplomacy, national security, international
law enforcement, humanitarian aid, and emergency preparedness (p. 214).
Language Education
Around the world, becoming bilingual at a young age is a common practice. In
Europe, most children study second, third, or even fourth languages during elementary
school, often through forms of language immersion. In the United States, foreign
language education has typically been concentrated at the secondary level with surveys
showing that approximately 91% of high schools and 58% of middle schools offer
courses in foreign languages (Rhodes & Pufahl, 2009). Prior to 1997, Spanish, French,
and German were the most commonly taught foreign languages; since 1997, Spanish and
Chinese instruction have steadily increased as French and German instruction have
declined. Less than one-third of elementary schools in the United States offer foreign
language instruction (Branaman & Rhodes, 1997; Rhodes & Pufahl, 2009).
Rhodes and Pufahl (2009) divide elementary language instruction into three
program types: language-focused programs, often called Foreign Language in the
Elementary School (FLES); exploratory programs, referred to as Foreign Language
Experience or Exploratory (FLEX); and immersion programs. FLES and FLEX programs
are pull-out programs where students have a language class for a specific number of
minutes each week (Met, 2008a). In 2008, 39% of public elementary school foreign
language programs were language focused, 47% were exploratory, and 14% were
11
immersion (Rhodes & Pufahl, 2009). Only 39% of all elementary school language
programs report an articulation from elementary language programs into secondary
programs. Rhodes and Pufahl (2009) cite the lack of long-sequence K–12 language
programs as one of their chief concerns about language education, along with inequitable
access for students to language programs, and a severe shortage of qualified language
teachers.
Immersion programs differ from language focused or exploratory language
programs in that they provide content-based instruction (CBI), meaning that the target
language is the vehicle for teaching academic content such as mathematics, language arts,
science, or social studies. Content-based instruction can be offered through several
models including theme-based, in which language skills are taught around topics or
themes; sheltered, in which instructors use special strategies for making input
comprehensible; and adjunct, in which a language course and a content course are linked
for instruction (Snow, 2005). Language focused and exploratory programs do not offer
content-based instruction, but rather teach about a language and may or may not offer all
instruction in the target language. Immersion has steadily increased over the past three
decades, with only 2% of elementary school language programs being immersion
programs in 1987 to 8% in 1997, and finally 14% in 2008 (Rhodes & Pufahl, 2009). The
number of one-way immersion programs in the United States has grown from 3 programs
in 1971 to 263 in 2006, and finally to 492 in 2012 (Branaman & Rhodes, 1997; Rhodes &
Pufahl, 2009; Tedick 2012).
Although it is not the focus of this literature review, it is essential to acknowledge
the important area of English as a Second Language (ESL) in a conversation about
12
language education in the United States. English is taught as a second language in
classrooms around the United States to English Language Learners (ELLs), sometimes
also called English Learners (ELs). Like the forms of language education discussed here,
ESL can be taught through a variety of methods. ESL program models include ESL pull-out,
usually used in elementary school; an ESL class period, common in secondary
schools; or an ESL resource center, acting as a variation on the pull-out model (Rennie,
1993). Other ESL program models may include sheltered instruction and content-based
instruction—which require content teachers to use a wide range of strategies to make the
subject matter comprehensible and accessible in a new language for students (Rennie,
1993).
ESL programs are sometimes termed bilingual programs in that they allow or
encourage the use of each student’s native language, in addition to English, for
instruction during the school day. In general, a bilingual education program may include
any program in which academic content is taught in two languages. Early-exit bilingual
programs, also called transitional bilingual programs, use the native language in an
attempt to mainstream students as quickly as possible, often resulting in a subtractive
form of bilingualism (Rennie, 1993; Thomas and Collier, 2012). Late-exit bilingual
programs encourage the use of the native language for an extended period of time. A
third form of bilingual education, known as a developmental bilingual program, is
additive in nature and therefore considered dual language education, which will be
discussed later in this chapter.
Though considered a form of bilingual education, dual language and immersion
education proponents have distanced themselves from this term in recent years as
13
bilingual education became synonymous with troubled transitional bilingual programs of
the past (Crawford, 2007). Similarly, the name of bilingual education suffered during
politically charged English-only debates that eventually resulted in legislation against
bilingual education in California, Massachusetts, and Arizona. In these states,
developmental bilingual programs have been eliminated, and waivers are needed for
participation in two-way programs (Tedick, 2012a). Similarly, the No Child Left Behind
Act eliminated all references to bilingualism as an educational goal. Proponents of
English-only legislation argue that students need to be mainstreamed as quickly as
possible with the goal of English fluency and American assimilation. Proponents of
bilingual education maintain that this argument stems from “(1) prejudice against Latinos
and other linguistic minorities, and (2) misunderstanding of bilingual education”
(Crawford, 2007).
Dual Language Education
Aware of the past challenges of bilingual education, dual language and immersion
programs have attempted to overcome the problems of bilingual education by providing
students with an environment of additive bilingualism. Met (2004) explains that best
practice for language learning requires time, cognitive engagement, real-life motivation,
continuity of learning, and cultural interaction. Dual language immersion aims for best
practice in each of these areas. Lyster (2007) writes,
[Dual language and immersion education] is a form of bilingual education
that aims for additive bilingualism by providing students with a sheltered
classroom environment in which they receive at least half of their subject-matter
instruction through the medium of a language that they are learning
14
as a second, foreign, heritage, or indigenous language. In addition, they
receive some instruction through the medium of a shared primary
language, which normally has majority status in their community. (p. 8)
Under the umbrella of dual language education, four program models exist: (1)
developmental bilingual education, (2) heritage language immersion, (3) one-way
(foreign language) immersion, and (4) two-way immersion (Christian, 2011).
Developmental bilingual programs aim for additive bilingualism using both English and
the minority language to teach content to a linguistically homogenous group of students.
An example of a developmental bilingual model would be a program that teaches
academic content in both English and Spanish with the goal of bilingualism and biliteracy.
The other three forms of dual language education—one-way, two-way, and
heritage programs—teach language through immersion (Fortune and Tedick, 2008).
Immersion education is distinguished from other forms of language instruction in that it
provides enriched education through additive bilingualism and content-based instruction
in a target language for at least 50% of the day, with support for the first language (Cloud,
Genesee, & Hamayan, 2000). Fortune and Tedick (2008) expand this definition by
carefully qualifying immersion programs with five criteria: (1) use of the target language
for 50% of the day in elementary school or with at least two year-long content courses in
the target language during the secondary grades, (2) promotion of additive bilingualism
and biliteracy, (3) employment of teachers who are completely proficient in the
language(s) they teach, (4) support for the students’ first language, and (5) clear
separation of teacher use of instructional languages (p. 10). Further distinguishing
features of well-implemented programs of immersion, according to Fortune and Tedick
15
(2008), include the following: content-driven and language-attentive curriculum;
integrated language, culture, and content; cognitively and linguistically challenging tasks;
instructional strategies with scaffolding; interactions with peer-peer communication; and
cooperative learning techniques to build relationships (p.10).
Similarly, internationally renowned immersion researchers Swain and Johnson
(1997) developed a list of core and variable features of immersion programs, which was
updated by Swain and Lapkin (2005) as follows: (1) the immersion language is the
medium of instruction; (2) the immersion curriculum parallels the local L1 curriculum;
(3) overt support is given to all home languages; (4) the program aims for additive
bilingualism; (5) exposure to the immersion language is largely confined to the
classroom; (6) students enter with similar levels of proficiency in the immersion
language; (7) the teachers are bilingual; (8) the classroom culture recognizes the cultures
of the multiple immigrant communities to which the students belong (p. 172).
Immersion education can also be categorized according to the goals of each
program. One-way or foreign language immersion teaches a minority or world language
to majority language speakers for the purpose of enrichment and increased cultural
sensitivity (Tedick, 2012a). Two-way immersion works with native speakers of two
different languages and backgrounds, with the goal of maintenance of the first language
(for minority language speakers) and enrichment in the target language (for majority
language speakers). The classroom is ideally created with a 1:1 ratio so that
approximately half of the class speaks each of the languages, although a 1:2 ratio still
qualifies within the recommended minimum ratio. Heritage language programs aim to
teach a target language to students who possess a cultural or linguistic connection to that
16
language but lack language proficiency. As a form of heritage language programs,
indigenous language immersion aspires to revitalize a language and culture that is an
endangered language spoken by Native Peoples (Fortune & Tedick, 2008). One of the
most successful programs of indigenous language revitalization has taken place in New
Zealand over the past several decades as schools have offered immersion in the Maori
language. In the United States, the Hawaiian language has undergone a similar process on
a smaller scale. Native Americans have also established indigenous programs in Ojibwe,
Diné (Navajo), Yup’ik, Chinook, Dakota, Inupiaq, and other Native American languages.
One-way immersion introduces a foreign or second language to an English-dominant
child in an effort to make him or her functionally proficient in that language.
One-way immersion can be early immersion, beginning in kindergarten or first grade;
middle immersion, starting in fourth or fifth grades; or late immersion, starting in sixth,
seventh, or eighth grades. In the United States, only early immersion programs exist.
Programs may be considered total immersion or full immersion with 90% to 100% of the
subject matter taught in the target language for the first few years of the program, or
partial immersion with a minimum of 50% of the curriculum being taught in the target
language (Lyster, 2007). One-way programs may exist as a single strand of immersion
classrooms within a larger school, or they may involve the entire school population
(Tedick, 2012a).
As of October 2011, the Center for Applied Linguistics had identified 492 one-way
immersion programs (including indigenous language programs) in 22 different
languages in the United States (Tedick, 2012a). Utah is the state with the highest number
of one-way or foreign language immersion programs, followed by Minnesota, Hawaii,
17
Louisiana, Oregon, California, and then Virginia. Spanish is the most common language
of instruction, accounting for 45% of the immersion programs, followed by French at
22%, and Mandarin Chinese at 13%, with 19 other languages represented in various
immersion schools across the nation such as Japanese, German, Italian, Russian, Arabic,
Greek, Norwegian, Cantonese, Danish, Salish, Swedish, Vietnamese, and the indigenous
languages previously mentioned. Though not referenced in these numbers, the United
States also has several Portuguese immersion programs, specifically in the Northeast
(Rhode Island, Massachusetts), Florida, and most recently, Utah. Because the CAL
directory relies on self-reporting, these numbers are suspected to be lower than the actual
number of programs.
Two-way immersion combines linguistically heterogeneous students in an effort
to move English-dominant children towards a second language while native speakers of
the minority language move towards English. Two-way immersion is categorized by the
percentage of instruction in each language, with the first number representing the
minority language. A 50/50 model, for example, would entail half the day’s instruction in
the target language and the other half in the native language. However, younger children
are often involved in the 90/10 or 80/20 models, which emphasize the native language
initially, with a gradual increase in target language instruction as children progress
through the grade levels (Ordoñez, 2004).
Research shows that the two-way immersion model is the most effective program
model for minority language children (Thomas and Collier, 2012), and ample data
suggests that it has the potential to begin closing the achievement gap between students
of different racial, linguistic, and socioeconomic statuses. Cummins (1981) states,
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“Schools have contributed directly to minority children’s academic difficulties by
undermining their cultural identity, attempting to eradicate their L1, and exposing them to
incomprehensible context-reduced input in English” (p. 36). One of the reasons that dual
language immersion programs are desirable is that they allow for each language to be
nurtured and constantly used to allow for progress in each language. The commonly held
notion that English Language Learners should eradicate their first language and learn
only English actually negatively impacts the child’s home and family life (Wong-
Fillmore, 1991). In reality, nurturing both languages is advantageous to the child and
community. Research by Lindholm-Leary (2007) shows that English Language Learners
who participated in two-way immersion programs had more positive and confident
attitudes towards school, college, and the learning of two languages with a lower
likelihood of dropping out of school. By the end of elementary school, nearly all ELL
students in these two-way immersion programs were rated as proficient in both languages,
and by tenth grade, nearly all students tested high enough on the Advanced Placement
(AP) Spanish test to receive AP credit (Lindholm-Leary, 2007).
As of June 2013, the Directory of Two-Way Immersion Programs in the United
States listed 421 two-way immersion programs in nine languages, with 390 of the
programs being a combination of Spanish and English. California maintains the largest
number of two-way immersion programs, composing more than a quarter of the total
number of programs. Coming in second, Texas has half the number of programs as
California and is followed by New York, Illinois, and Oregon (Center for Applied
Linguistics, 2011). Though not accurately represented in these data, Utah supports as
many two-way programs as New York (Roberts, personal communication, May 25, 2013).
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Effectiveness of Dual Language and Immersion Education
Genesee (1994) argues, “There is no doubt that immersion programs are the most
effective approach available to second language teaching in school settings” (p. 9). Met
(2008a) elaborates by stating that immersion is “the least expensive model, which
ironically results in the highest level of language proficiency” (p. 1). Hamayan, Genesee,
and Cloud (2013) cite years of research to prove that students in dual language immersion
programs are capable of reaching high levels of functional proficiency in both the
immersion language and the native language. Genesee (1987, 2004) asserts that these
students academically perform “on par with or above their non-immersion peers on
standardized tests administered in English” (as cited in Tedick, 2012b). Though levels of
functional proficiency in the target language may vary for students in immersion
programs with non-cognate languages, these students still “achieve at or above the level
of same-language peers in English-only programs” (Genesee & Lindholm-Leary, 2013, p.
16). In full immersion models, some students may show lags in English reading and
writing initially; however, within one year of beginning English language arts instruction,
these lags disappear (Genesee & Lindholm Leary, 2013).
Evidence exists to show that students from varying socioeconomic and ethnic
backgrounds are also successful in dual language immersion. Lindholm-Leary (2001,
2006) states that Spanish-speaking students in two-way immersion programs outperform
their Spanish-speaking peers in any other type of language program by displaying higher
levels of Spanish and academic English proficiency (as cited in Tedick, 2012b).
Immersion also increases sensitivity for and appreciation of both the native culture and
the immersion culture. Bearse and de Jong (2008) claim that Anglo students see
20
bilingualism as increasing their job opportunities, while Latino students recognize
bilingualism as connecting them to family and roots (as cited in Tedick, 2012b).
Within the United States, language immersion is traditionally concentrated at the
elementary level. This stems from the generally accepted philosophy that early second
language acquisition is preferable to later. Lee (1996) states that early bilingualism is
ideal: “The preschool years in particular are critical to social, linguistic, and cognitive
development” (p. 514). Other factors that make second language acquisition ideal for
younger children include the active participation of the brain’s right hemisphere during
the early years, the higher likelihood of conquering a foreign accent, a tendency towards
more implicit learning instead of explicit learning, and affective considerations such as an
egocentric nature and lack of inhibitions (Brown, 2007).
Cummins’s Threshold Hypothesis (1981) states that there are three theoretical
threshold levels of bilingual proficiency that produce various cognitive effects. In the
lowest level of bilingualism, termed “limited bilingualism,” negative cognitive effects are
shown through underdeveloped proficiency in both languages. Once a bilingual passes
the lower threshold to attain some level of proficiency in the second language, neither
negative nor positive cognitive effects are observed. According to this theory, the highest
level of bilingualism, proficient bilingualism, leads to cognitive benefits. Cummins’s
theory emphasizes the importance of attaining proficiency when learning a language.
Language proficiency should not be confused with fluency. Fluency means the ability of
an individual to communicate in a fluid manner, while proficiency aims for a higher level
of communication including academic language expertise. Research shows that the
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earlier a child is exposed to a language and the longer the exposure lasts, the higher the
student performance scores are (Cummins, 1981).
At both the elementary and secondary levels, “only a small number of bilingual
programs in the country have the continued maintenance of the first language as an
explicit goal. Hence many English learners receive instructional programs that are too
short-term in focus and are not cognitively or academically challenging” (Alanis &
Rodriguez, 2008, p. 306). Met (2008a) explains that the articulation of language
programs from elementary to secondary is of utmost importance if long-term proficiency
is to be achieved and maintained. This suggests that even though elementary immersion
programs exist, students may not be able to attain proficiency due to a lack of secondary
schools that carry out the initial work begun in elementary immersion programs.
Though opponents of language immersion worry that such schools do not have
the capacity to reach out to all students, including those in special education with learning
disabilities or low student performance scores, Cummins (1981) argues,
Programs that aim to develop a high level of proficiency in two languages
provide greater potential for academic development for all children than
education through the medium of only one language. Whether or not this
greater potential is realized in any particular bilingual program will, of
course, depend on the quality of the program. . . . The enrichment potential
of bilingual education is accessible to all students. (p. 42)
In most situations, dual language immersion is available to a spectrum of students:
English Language Learners, gifted and talented students, and those enrolled in Special
Education with legal documentation of disability in Individualized Education Plans
22
(IEPs) or 504 plans. The cognitive advantages associated with bilingualism are beneficial
to all students. After conducting an exhaustive literature review in this area, Fortune and
Menke (2010) state that there is no solid research that would support prohibiting children
with special needs from immersion programs.
Closing the Achievement Gap
Met (2001) has said that the historical omission of intensive language education in
the United States has contributed to a growing achievement gap between American
students and their peers in other countries. Within the United States, students who have
access to foreign language education are more likely to be successful readers with higher
scores on standardized measures of reading and mathematics even if they come from
high-poverty backgrounds (Met, 2001).
As previously mentioned, one of the most important research findings regarding
dual language immersion is the potential of both one-way and two-way models to close
the achievement gap for ELLs. Collier and Thomas (2004) have been collecting and
analyzing data in this area for the past two decades with consistent results that dual
language immersion programs “lead to grade-level and above-grade-level achievement in
second language, the only programs that fully close the gap” (p. 11). In their research of
one-way and two-way programs throughout the country, Collier and Thomas (2004) state
that early dual language immersion programs are expected to close 70% to 100% of the
achievement gap by fifth grade. Dual language immersion programs can do this because
they offer continuous support throughout the many years of a student’s education,
whereas ESL programs aim to mainstream students quickly. Once students are
mainstreamed, they will continue to progress, but may struggle to close the achievement
23
gap completely because they have already started out behind their peers. For this reason,
it is essential that students begin dual language immersion programs as early as possible,
beginning in elementary school when students have enough time to fully close the
achievement gap.
As Collier and Thomas (2004) point out, dual language immersion programs do
not offer watered-down instruction in a special curriculum, but rather give instruction in
thematic units of core academic curriculum. Students who participate in ESL pull-out
programs fall further behind in their core subjects, while dual language immersion
provides language instruction through the core curriculum. Thomas and Collier (2012)
further explain that dual language immersion programs not only close the achievement
gap for English Language Learners, but do so for other groups as well, including Latinos
fluent in English, African Americans, and students of low socioeconomic status.
Improved test scores by these groups show that “fully meeting the needs of historically
underserved and low-scoring groups is an important reason to expand access to dual
language classes for as many student groups as possible” (Thomas & Collier, 2012, p.
112). Figure 1 from Thomas and Collier’s data shows the effectiveness of each form of
English language education.
24
Figure 1: Program Models Comparison (Thomas & Collier, 2012, p. 93)
25
Implementation of Dual Language Immersion
A successful dual language immersion program happens when “the program
provides an atmosphere that allows students to acquire a second language and learn about
another culture without sacrificing their individual identities” (Alanis & Rodriguez, 2008,
p. 306). Alanis and Rodriguez (2008) define four features of success for immersion
programs (two-way programs in their case): (1) pedagogical equity, (2) effective
bilingual teachers, (3) active parent participation, and (4) knowledgeable leadership and
continuity.
Pedagogical equity occurs when both the native language and the target language
include rigorous content standards, with neither language being promoted over the other.
Effective bilingual teachers implement this pedagogy by highly valuing the philosophy
and goals of immersion while working tirelessly on (1) meaningful, thematic instruction;
(2) active hands-on learning in collaborative groups; and (3) collaborative and
cooperative student interaction in heterogeneous groups (Alanis & Rodriguez, 2008).
Petron (2009) highlights the importance of transnational cultural capital that teachers
from other countries offer. Involving teachers and parents through democratic processes
empowers them with ownership of the program and results in lower turnover for teachers
and students alike. Parent activism helps sustain a program amid challenges as parents
advocate for the program within their own communities. Successful programs also
require a knowledgeable and committed administration to provide continuity of
leadership in initiating and maintaining the program over the years.
Tedick and Fortune (2012) state that a well-implemented program has a content-driven
and language-attentive curriculum including corrective feedback techniques;
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explicit attention to lexical features within content-driven, communicatively-oriented
instruction; and instruction of grammatical structures with the opportunity for meaningful
use of those structures in the context (as cited in Tedick, 2012d; Lyster, 2007). Culture is
integrated into language and content so that students gain “cultural competence for global
citizenship” (Tedick, 2012d). Though teaching the target language culture is essential, the
culture of the classroom mirrors that of the local community and embraces the cultures of
all students in the program (Tedick, 2012d). Students should be expected to complete
final products for tasks that are both cognitively and linguistically challenging with a
balanced use of instructional scaffolding and a language-rich environment. Teachers
should encourage peer to peer interaction, cooperative learning experiences, and extended
use of the immersion language, while providing for a distinct separation of languages in
which the teacher uses the immersion language only during instructional time (Tedick,
2012d).
Though immersion has a track record for success, there are many challenges in
implementing immersion. Tedick (2012c) categorizes these challenges into five main
areas: (1) immersion language use, (2) immersion language development, (3) academic
and educational challenges, (4) teacher preparation and development, and (5) program
design and implementation. Fortune (2001) states that supporting and encouraging
students in using the immersion language is a constant challenge for teachers (as cited in
Tedick, 2012c). Developing the immersion language can be challenging because
immersion programs are inherently content-driven and lack focus on helping students
achieve language proficiency (Lyster, 2007). Because of this, immersion students may
not attain native-like language skills in that they have a limited range of vocabulary,
27
usage that is not idiomatic, less complex oral language, and persistent grammatical errors
that may have fossilized (Genesee, 2007; Tedick, 2012c). Lyster (1987) also states that
the immersion language tends to become more Anglicized over time (as cited in Tedick
2012).
Finding and training qualified bilingual teachers for dual language immersion
programs is another significant challenge. Teachers may not have the necessary target
language proficiency to teach immersion or they may not have the necessary English
proficiency to navigate an American school and collaborate with an English-speaking
faculty. Others may not have the official teaching credentials necessary to teach in public
schools, or if they do, their teacher preparation may have insufficiently prepared them to
teach in an immersion classroom. Many of the teachers who satisfy all of these
requirements may need visas in order to be able to work in the United States. Other
challenges in planning an immersion program include the following: finding authentic
and developmentally appropriate materials; ensuring alignment with district and state
standards; developing curriculum; sustaining student motivation; dealing with attrition,
late entries, student scheduling, transportation, and staffing; clustering with teams; and
encouraging parent involvement (Montone & Loeb, 2003; Tedick, 2012c).
Literacy
In its simplest terms, literacy is the ability to read and write fluently and
accurately (Cloud, Genesee, & Hamayan, 2009). Literacy instruction can be separated
into two schools of thought: the bottom-up approach and the top-down approach. In the
bottom-up approach, children acquire literacy by beginning with the simplest forms of
language—letters and sounds—and working their way up to forming words, phrases, and
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sentences (Gunning, 2005). The top-down approach looks at language holistically and
advocates learning literacy through higher-order thinking and meaning-making (Cloud,
Genesee, & Hamayan, 2009). Today, comprehensive literacy instruction advocates a
balanced approach with an added emphasis on the importance of comprehension and
meaning-making in literacy (Morrow & Gambrell, 2011).
After a review of quantitative research, the National Reading Panel found five
critical skills for learning to read English: (1) phonemic awareness, (2)
decoding/encoding abilities, (3) vocabulary, (4) fluency, and (5) comprehension
(National Reading Panel, 2000).
Phonemic awareness, a subset of phonological awareness, assesses a child’s
ability to understand the smallest units of spoken language (phonemes) and how they can
be manipulated to form words. It is different from phonics instruction, which teaches
students about how to read or spell using letter-sounds. Phonemic awareness can be
taught in several of the following instructional approaches: providing analogies to known
words, analyzing the relationship to previously learned sounds, embedding phonics into
text reading, spelling words phonemically, or by converting letters to sounds and
synthesizing the sounds into words. These approaches may manifest themselves through
phonemic isolation, identity, categorization, blending, segmentation, or deletion
(National Reading Panel, 2000).
The next critical skill of decoding and encoding is sometimes referred to as
phonological instruction. Decoding is reading—the process of linking letters to sounds
and turning them into words, such as blending phonemes into words (National Reading
Panel, 2000). Words can be read in one of five ways: (1) predicted, (2) sounded out, (3)
29
chunked, (4) read by analogy, or (5) recognized immediately as a sight word (Gunning,
2005). Encoding is the reverse process used in spelling, when sounds are converted to
letters and then words.
The third critical skill, vocabulary, is defined as the words of a language that are
familiar to a person, expressed orally or through print. Vocabulary instruction is vital in
guiding a child toward overall comprehension of a text. The larger a child’s vocabulary is,
the fewer unknown words she or he will encounter in text, leading to increased success
and decreased frustration in reading (National Reading Panel, 2000).
Fluency, the fourth critical skill, gauges a person’s ability to read with “speed,
accuracy, and proper expression” (National Reading Panel, 2000). Fluency has generally
been taught in two ways: first, through guided repeated oral reading, which allows
students to read orally with assistance and feedback from a teacher; and second, through
independent silent reading, which requires students to read individually without guidance
or intervention.
The final critical skill, comprehension, is an active and complex cognitive process
in which readers understand and make meaning as they interact with a text.
Comprehension is highly dependent on students’ vocabulary proficiency and the
preparation of a teacher in comprehension instruction. Comprehension can be taught as
readers learn to monitor their understanding of text, cooperatively learn through reading
strategies, use graphic organizers, answer and generate questions about a text, analyze a
story structure, and summarize the content of a text (National Reading Panel, 2000).
Although many teachers prioritize these five literacy skills in the above order,
research regarding second language learners suggests that instruction should stress
30
primarily the importance of comprehension, followed by vocabulary, phonemic
awareness, decoding/encoding, and fluency (Cloud et al., 2009). Researchers explain that
students naturally acquire fluency in an immersion setting; however, students need
deliberate literacy instruction in comprehension and vocabulary in order to develop the
necessary comprehension skills and expand the number of words they can understand and
produce.
Though much of the No Child Left Behind legislation in education was based on
research done by the National Reading Panel, it should be noted that many reading
experts find the definition of literacy from this study to be lacking due to its
oversimplification of literacy. The Commission on Reading of the National Council of
Teachers of English (NCTE) criticized the National Reading Panel’s report for narrowly
defining reading as a technical skill instead of a “complex and purposeful sociocultural,
cognitive, and linguistic process in which readers simultaneously use their knowledge of
spoken and written language, their knowledge of the topic of the text, and their
knowledge of their culture to construct meaning with text” (p. 1). Focusing only on
statistical research and excluding qualitative research, the National Reading Panel limited
its study of reading to the previously mentioned five competencies, without
acknowledging the broad range of other skills needed to attain high levels of literacy.
Researchers like Shaw (2005) responded to the National Reading Panel stating,
Characteristics of effective reading instruction focus on authentic
experiences with texts, multiple daily reading experiences, explicit
demonstrations of reading strategies, ongoing assessment to inform
instruction, creative and critical student response to texts, inquiry into
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language study, student collaborations, and partnerships with families to
extend school learning. (as cited in Kucer, 2008, p. 23)
Kucer (2008) looks at literacy as a process with literacy events occurring in four
dimensions: developmental, sociocultural, linguistic, and cognitive. Gee (1996) argues
that the focus should not be placed on language or literacy, but on the social practices,
termed “Discourse.” Gee’s research has emphasized the importance of multiple literacies,
which broadens the definition of literacy to include new “real-world” literacies beyond
traditional reading and writing. Though the National Reading Panel focuses on
“Learning-to-Read,” Brause, Lee, and Moliterno (2008) stress the importance of
integrated, multi-disciplinary, and thematic curriculum instruction, which offers students
real-world experiences of “Reading-to-Learn.”
Braunger and Lewis (2008) push even further beyond the National Reading
Panel’s five competencies by defining thirteen core understandings about learning to
read: (1) reading is an active, cognitive, and affective process; (2) background knowledge
and prior experience are critical; (3) social interaction is essential; (4) reading and writing
develop together; (5) reading involves complex thinking; (6) environments rich in
literacy experiences, resources, and models facilitate reading development; (7)
engagement in the reading task is key; (8) children’s understandings of print are not the
same as adults’ understandings; (9) children develop phonemic awareness and phonics
knowledge through a variety of literacy opportunities, models, and demonstrations; (10)
children learn successful reading strategies in the context of real reading; (11) children
learn best when teachers employ a variety of strategies such as engagement, balanced
approaches, apprenticeship, comprehension, questioning, discussion and response,
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metacognition, vocabulary, fluency, word identification, independent reading, guided
reading, explicit word study, explicit strategy, oral reading, read aloud, and shared
reading; (12) children need the opportunity to read, read, read; and (13) monitoring the
development of reading is vital to student success.
Biliteracy
In addition to bilingualism and increased cultural awareness and sensitivity,
biliteracy is one of the core goals of a dual language immersion program (Fortune &
Tedick, 2008). Hornberger (1990) defines biliteracy as “any and all instances in which
communication occurs in two (or more) languages in or around writing” (p. 213). Just
like bilingualism, biliteracy may occur simultaneously or sequentially. Simultaneous
biliteracy occurs when first and second language literacies are acquired at the same time
with time allotted for daily literacy instruction in each language. Sequential biliteracy is
found when one language’s literacy program is taught first and the other second.
Immersion programs choosing sequential biliteracy must choose whether to teach the
majority or minority language’s literacy first (Beeman & Urow, 2009). Genesee (2007)
explains that more exposure and instructional time dedicated to the minority language in
immersion usually indicate higher levels of proficiency in that language. However, the
reverse is not true. More exposure and instructional time in English does not necessarily
result in higher levels of English proficiency for immersion students.
Kucer (2008) states that biliterate students are not engaged in two different
processes when reading in two languages as “there is a positive and supportive
relationship between the processes and strategies used in the first and second languages”
(p. 39). Because bilingual and biliterate students face a higher likelihood of encountering
33
unknown grammatical structures, text structures, and vocabulary, they must be prepared
with the necessary strategies to monitor and repair comprehension. Research on biliteracy
has shown that background knowledge is more of an asset to bilingual and biliterate
students than linguistic knowledge (Kucer, 2008). School and home settings that honor
every language help provide students with the cognitive energy that reading in a second
language requires.
Teaching literacy in a second language requires teachers to complete five main
tasks: (1) select appropriate materials to create a print-rich environment, (2) develop oral
language skills to support literacy, (3) ensure instruction is culturally appropriate with
background knowledge, (4) develop important decoding and encoding skills, and (5)
teach important reading (text processing) and writing (text production) skills (Cloud et al.,
2000). When working with students during the early literacy stage, teachers should use
the top-down approach; however, later stages of literacy do best with a combination of
both the top-down and bottom-up approaches, when teachers zoom in on specific skills
and then zoom out to show the context of these skills (Cloud et al. 2000). Bialystok
(2001) defends the need for explicit skills instruction and the absolute importance of
phonological awareness in the social, linguistic, and cognitive skills that children need to
learn to read. Immersion expert Roy Lyster (2007) likewise asserts the need for teaching
explicit skills, a practice he terms “counterbalanced instruction” and defines as
instruction that “requires learners to vary their attentional focus between, on the one hand,
the content to which they usually attend in classroom discourse, and on the other, target
language features that are not otherwise attended to” (p. 4). Lyster stresses that, despite
immersion’s emphasis on content, teachers must focus on the forms of the target
34
language and explicitly correct errors in the second language with more teacher-student
and student-student interaction and less reliance on non-verbal cues to convey meaning.
Teaching literacy in an immersion classroom is also unique because teachers use
content-based instruction. However, content-based instruction alone does not adequately
supply sufficient language instruction (Snow, 2005). Davison and Williams (2001) claim
that to integrate language and content means teachers must focus on two tasks: (1) the
sequencing of the language, and (2) the content and scope of the curriculum (as cited in
Snow, 2005, p. 697). By building on the cornerstones of curriculum and instruction,
assessment, teacher knowledge and training, and student factors, academic literacy can be
developed according to its components of linguistic characteristics, background
knowledge, cognitive knowledge, and knowledge of discourse community (Snow, 2005).
Snow, Met, and Genesee (1989) developed a framework for addressing sequence
and scope, which required teachers to define content-obligatory language and content-compatible
language. As suggested by its title, content-obligatory language is the
language, grammar, vocabulary, and structures that are necessary for mastering the
content, while content-compatible language naturally works with specific content
material. Calling for a balanced approach of language and content with higher-order
thinking skills, Snow, Met, and Genesee (1989) urge teachers to collaborate to create a
coherent and deliberate scope and sequence for language development across the grade
levels integrating content-obligatory and content-compatible language appropriately.
As previously stated, comprehension has been identified as the most important
skill for language learners to work on in second language literacy (Cloud et al., 2000).
For second language reading comprehension, Durgunoglu (1997) defines three factors as
35
leading to higher levels of reading comprehension in the second language: (1) linguistic
knowledge of the second language, (2) literacy skills from the first language, and (3)
prior knowledge of the subject matter (as cited in Bialystok, 2001).
Second to comprehension in priority, vocabulary must be a central focus of any
immersion classroom. Stahl and Nagy (2006) write, “It may overstate the case to say that
vocabulary knowledge is central to children’s and adults’ success in school and life, but
not by much” (as cited in Met, 2008b, p. 54). Vocabulary knowledge, which is best
acquired through both intensive and extensive reading and writing, is a strong predictor
of successful literacy development and is inextricably linked to topic knowledge and
academic achievement in immersion (Eskey, 2005; Met, 2008b). Research shows that
children must have vocabulary knowledge of approximately 95% of a text for
comprehension and 97% of a text to be able to use context clues to derive the meaning of
an unknown word from a text (Met, 2008b). In immersion classrooms, teachers must
make every content lesson a language lesson by explicitly teaching words that are
important because of their frequency and relevancy for students becoming mature
language users (Met, 2008b).
In both traditional classrooms and immersion classrooms, teachers face the
significant challenge of building academic language so that students can read and write
advanced content in each subject. According to Cummins (1979), language can be
divided into two forms: social language, termed basic interpersonal communicative skills
(BICS), and academic language, termed cognitive academic language proficiency
(CALP). Used in casual settings, social language (BICS) is taught from an earlier age
than academic language (CALP), which can be used to express complexity, higher-order
36
thinking processes, and abstract ideas (Zwiers, 2008). While BICS can be attained in a
second language in approximately two years, CALP generally takes a minimum of five to
seven years. A lack of academic language is considered one of the central causes of an
increasing achievement gap between high- and low-performing students (Zwiers, 2008).
Though it is vital to recognize and reward the cultural capital of each student, teachers
must also challenge the linguistic development of each child through the development of
academic language in preparation for the instruction of advanced content (Zwiers, 2008).
Met (2008b) emphasized the importance of the language of academics for second
language learners in immersion classrooms: “At the point in their academic career where
they are expected to read and write in order to learn, students need greater proficiency in
language and literacy in order to succeed in internalizing academically rigorous
curriculum” (p. 51). She continued by explaining that spoken social language is highly
contextualized, allowing for easier understanding through the physical characteristics of a
speaker and situation. However, written academic language is highly decontextualized,
creating an added challenge in the vocabulary requirements of a student learning in a
second language (Met, 2008b).
Met (2008b) states that the most important vocabulary to teach are words that are
(1) critical to making meaning of a text, (2) high frequency in age-appropriate texts, (3)
highly useful for language learners, and (4) relevant to a particular text (p. 59). Teachers
can emphasize these words by using their voice for pausing and repetition, stopping to
define a word, or using visuals or writing the word on the board (Met, 2008b). Productive
tasks, in which students speak or write a word, can help students retain new vocabulary
more than receptive tasks, in which students simply hear or read a word. Swain’s
37
comprehensible output hypothesis (1995) suggests that students can negotiate gaps in
their linguistic knowledge through productive tasks and opportunities for output (as cited
in Swain & Lapkin, 1995). Met (2008b) defines productive tasks as class discussion,
graphic organizers, student-to-student collaboration in groups, and think-pair-share.
The cognitive flexibility and cross-linguistic transfer that bilingualism brings
assists children in seeking second language literacy. This is particularly evident in the
areas of comprehension, phonemic awareness, part of phonological awareness, and
decoding and encoding skills. In immersion settings, a child’s pre-literacy skills, such as
rhyming, syntactic knowledge, and discourse abilities, in one language have been found
to be transferable to a second language (Cloud et al., 2000; Verhoeven, 2011). In cognate
languages, research shows that the decoding skills of first and second language learners
appear to be approximately equal in the long run, due to cross-linguistic transfer from the
first language orthography (writing system) and phonology (sound systems) (Verhoeven,
2011). The development of the previous four skills in second language literacy will
naturally lead towards the development of fluency, the last of the National Reading
Panel’s five identified areas for reading development. By focusing first on
comprehension, vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and decoding/encoding, fluency will
naturally improve.
For all second language learners, the length of time and amount of exposure to a
second language influences literacy achievement (Verhoeven, 2011). Also, the
connection of reading with writing is essential for the development of second language
literacy (Cloud et al., 2009). Other school factors that improve second language literacy
include (1) languages used in the curriculum, (2) instructional approaches and methods,
38
and (3) teacher attitudes towards the attainment of literacy, such as high expectations
(Verhoeven, 2011). Purposeful biliteracy, as opposed to accidental biliteracy, encourages
second language literacy through oral language, continuous literacy instruction, elevated
minority language status, appropriate materials, authentic instructional approaches, and
connections between the two languages. Research by Martin-Beltran (2010) shows that
teachers, particularly those in two-way immersion, may encourage language development
by giving students repeated opportunities to (1) play with language, (2) co-construct
language expertise, and (3) use each other as resources (p. 272).
Much of the success of dual language immersion strands or schools comes from
the status of the minority language within the school. The minority language must be
consistently elevated and celebrated so as to match the status of English (Beeman &
Urow, 2009). Also, teachers must remember that literacy is not simply an independent,
individual process, but rather a social relationship that requires interaction between
people (Wiley, 2005). For this reason, dual language immersion classrooms, with
bilingual teachers that make learning meaningful, interactive, and useful, are the perfect
place for the development of biliteracy (Cloud et al., 2009).
39
Chapter 3
Methodology
With nearly 100 language immersion programs in four languages (Chinese,
French, Portuguese, and Spanish) and more programs and languages to come, Utah is a
recognized leader in dual language immersion. Utah has received both national and
international attention as the first state to legislate state funding for language education.
Most of the details of Utah’s revolutionary dual language immersion initiative have not
been disclosed or studied. The purpose of this project is to document the conception and
development of dual language immersion in Utah and represent the perspectives of the
state team responsible for its success.
Research
Setting a solid theoretical foundation regarding dual language immersion
education was the first step in this creative project. In Chapter 2, a literature review has
been provided to justify the demand for dual language immersion education. Information
and research provided in this literature review were heavily based on information
provided by Dr. Diane J. Tedick, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota,
through her course, CI 5670 Foundations of Dual Language and Immersion Education,
held in the spring of 2012.
Building on this theoretical framework, the focus of the project was to create a
narrative timeline and chronological history to answer the following questions:
• What specific events led to a state dual language immersion initiative in Utah?
• How have the parameters of the state model been established?
40
• Who have been the significant players in Utah dual language immersion and
what have been their individual contributions?
• What events have been pivotal in steering the progression of Utah’s dual
language immersion programs?
• How is a new language program (i.e., Portuguese) implemented as part of the
Utah state model?
Design and Development
To answer these questions, information was gathered in four ways:
• formal, structured interviews with members of the Utah team
• informal conversations with state, district, and school level experts and
teachers
• classroom observations
• collaboration from attendance at state level meetings and national conferences
After securing permission from Gregg Roberts to compile a history of Utah’s dual
language immersion programs, the project began with a formal interview of Roberts.
Over the course of the following year, several more interviews were completed with
Roberts, in addition to informal consulting for the purposes of data verification. In total,
formal, structured interviews were conducted with nine members of the Utah dual
language immersion team:
• Gregg Roberts, World Language and Dual Language Immersion Specialist,
Utah State Office of Education
• Myriam Met, former director of the National Foreign Language Center, Utah
Consultant of Curriculum and Instruction
41
• Ann Tollefson, former president of the American Council on the Teaching of
Foreign Languages, World Language Consultant
• Ofelia Wade, Spanish Dual Language Immersion Director, Utah State Office
of Education; Immersion Specialist, Canyons School District
• Sandra Talbot, Chinese Dual Language Immersion Director, Utah State Office
of Education; Program Director, USOE Chinese STARTALK
• Kaye Murdock, French Dual Language Immersion Director, Utah State Office
of Education; French Immersion Specialist, Granite School District
• Doug Finch, Former Principal of Cascade Elementary School with Chinese
Dual Language Immersion, Alpine School District; Current Principal of
American Fork High School
• Karl Bowman, Principal of Harvest Elementary School with Spanish Dual
Language Immersion, Alpine School District
• Diane Bridge, Principal of Timpanogos Elementary School with Spanish Dual
Language Immersion, Provo School District
Though not questioned in official, structured interviews, the following people
served as advisors and provided continuous information during informal conversations:
• Greg Duncan, Founder of InterPrep, Utah Consultant for Proficiency and
Assessment
• Johanna Watzinger-Tharp, Associate Professor of Languages and Literature,
Associate Professor of Linguistics, Associate Dean of Humanities, University
of Utah
• Kristin Swenson, Research Associate, Utah Education Policy Center
42
• Carolyn Schubach, Associate Director for Advanced Learning Programs,
Granite School District
• Kerrie Neu, Elementary Dual Language Immersion Specialist, Granite School
District
• Tessa Dahl, Chinese Dual Language Immersion Coordinator, Utah State
Office of Education; Chinese Immersion Specialist, Granite School District
• Blair Bateman, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Brigham
Young University
• Eliane Bueno, First-grade Portuguese Dual Language Immersion Teacher at
Lakeview Elementary School
• Silvia Juhas, Pedagogical Supervisor, Aymara Publishing
To capture Utah dual language immersion in action, school visits were conducted
at the following schools, which host programs in the identified languages:
• Alta View Elementary School, Canyons School District, Spanish
• Cascade Elementary School, Alpine School District, Chinese
• Horizon Elementary School, Murray School District, Spanish
• Lakeview Elementary School, Provo School District, Portuguese
• Rocky Mountain Elementary School, Alpine School District, Portuguese
• Silver Mesa Elementary School, Canyons School District, Spanish
• Wasatch Elementary School, Provo School District, Chinese
Beyond the people and schools explicitly listed, I have collaborated with
innumerable colleagues through countless meetings over the course of the last year,
including, but not limited to, the following groups:
43
• Dual Language Immersion Directors
• Dual Language Immersion Curriculum Team
• Dual Language Immersion Advisory Council
• Dual Language Immersion Research Advisory Board
• World Language Coordinators Committee
• Governor’s World Language Council
• Chinese, French, Portuguese, and Spanish Cohorts
• Portuguese Steering Committee
I have also attended the following meetings and conferences:
• Annual Utah Dual Language Immersion Institute (AUDII)
• Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA)
• STARTALK, core program of the National Security Language Initiative
(NSLI)
• F-CAP, Flagship – Chinese Acquisition Pipeline
• American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)
• Southwest Conference on Language Teaching (SWCOLT)
• Utah Foreign Language Association (UFLA)
• Utah Valley University Immersion Summit
Validation
Formal interviews were either recorded and later transcribed or transcribed in real
time during the interview. Notes from informal collaboration and observations were kept
for reference throughout the writing of the project. All meetings and conferences were
documented through detailed minutes. Relevant documents and teaching materials were
44
collected from experts and teachers including, but not limited to, instructional time charts,
proficiency and assessment documents, curriculum maps, and scope and sequence
documents. The information gathered from interviews, collaboration, observations, and
meetings was then organized into general themes and placed into a timeline.
Due to the extensive number of people that were involved in providing
information on numerous occasions over the course of a year, individually citing sources
was not possible in Chapter 4. Unless specifically cited, the reader may assume that data
was either provided by the individual being discussed, is common knowledge among
state team members, or is specific information defined by Gregg Roberts during
consultations on this project.
Conclusion
Utah’s government has invested a significant amount of time and money in the
creation of a state language initiative for dual language immersion programs across the
state. With close to 100 schools and plans for continued expansion in the future, the Utah
State Office of Education possesses a proven track record for replicating and sustaining
dual language immersion in four different languages (Chinese, French, Portuguese, and
Spanish). To many, Utah seems a surprising choice for a language initiative, especially
considering its conservative politics and landlocked position in the United States.
Knowing the history of dual language immersion and the unique series of events that led
to the creation and expansion of dual language immersion programs across the state is
essential to understanding Utah’s success.
45
Chapter 4
History of Utah Dual Language Immersion
Despite its existence in countries across the globe for many years, immersion
education did not come to the United States until half of a century ago. The roots of
American dual language immersion education stretch back to 1965 when a group of
English-speaking, middle class parents in St. Lambert, Montreal, Canada, initiated a
grassroots movement for teaching French as a second language in their local schools.
Working with scholars from McGill University including Dr. Wallace Lambert, they
proposed a program to the school board wherein their English-speaking children would
be taught, from the first day of kindergarten, entirely in French. English would gradually
be introduced beginning in second grade until sixth grade, when half of the curriculum
would be taught in English and the other half taught in French. Parents had three goals in
mind: French literacy and language proficiency, cultural appreciation, and no sacrifice of
English academic achievement. The program was successful in that it revitalized the use
of French among the younger generation and immediately encouraged duplication of its
success all across Canada (Swain & Johnson, 1997).
In 1963, Cuban parents living in Miami, Florida, helped open the first two-way
bilingual education program at Coral Way Elementary School in Miami Dade County.
The program brought native Spanish-speaking children and native English-speaking
children together into a single classroom with instruction divided between English and
Spanish (Fortune & Tedick, 2008). In 1971, the first foreign language immersion
program in the United States started in Culver City, California, with an elementary
Spanish immersion program that followed the St. Lambert model of focusing first on the
46
target language with gradual exposure to English (Center for Applied Linguistics, 2011).
Other programs slowly began to open in coastal areas and large metropolitan centers of
the United States such as California, Florida, and Washington D.C. Each of these
programs functioned as islands—occasionally with district-level support, but usually as a
single school program.
Foundation of Utah Immersion
In the fall of 1979, after more than a year of preparation, Alpine School District
opened Utah’s first immersion program at Cherry Hill Elementary School in Orem. The
idea of opening an immersion program in Utah was sparked by a family who had moved
from Maryland to Utah in the late 1970s. In Maryland, the family’s daughter had
participated in a total immersion program in French (presumably Montgomery County
Public Schools) (James Taylor, personal communication, June 7, 2013). At the
encouragement of this family, Alpine School District provided the principal with $2,000
for materials to start a total immersion program in Spanish at Cherry Hill in 1979. The
program was composed of 11 first graders and 16 second graders and was backed by
tremendous parental support (Howe, 1983). Aurora Penrod was the first teacher in the
program’s one-teacher, full immersion model, which was initially conducted almost
entirely in Spanish for the first year. Students learned to read first in Spanish with English
literacy added in the spring of the second-grade year. Student achievement was
monitored through Spanish content assessments administered throughout the school year.
The results of these tests showed that the program was not damaging the math and
reading skills of students and that students were acquiring functional proficiency in
Spanish.
47
Parents were content with the progress of their students, and the program grew in
popularity among members of the community until similar programs were started in
elementary schools throughout Alpine School District including Northridge, Windsor,
Manila, Meadow, Rocky Mountain, Orchard, Foothill, and Harvest (Taylor, personal
communication, June 7, 2013). Several of the programs were started by teacher and
principal Karl H. Bowman, a native Spanish speaker from Chihuahua, Mexico who has
been an ardent supporter of Spanish immersion over the past three decades. The full
immersion model used at each of the schools meant that first grade was conducted 100%
in Spanish, with English instruction gradually introduced in Spanish/English as follows:
second grade, 90/10; third grade, 80/20; fourth grade, 70/30; fifth grade, 60/40; and sixth
grade, 50/50 (Bowman, personal communication, June 18, 2013). Teachers and
administrators in Alpine School District developed an extensive literacy curriculum
aligned to state standards for implementation at all schools in both English and Spanish.
The district also developed a series of procedures and guidelines for schools offering
immersion. The program eventually included an articulation into seventh, eighth, and
ninth grades culminating in students taking the Spanish Advanced Placement exam for
college credit (Bowman, personal communication, June 18, 2013). Alpine’s immersion
programs received significant support from professors at Brigham Young University with
additional assistance from the Utah State Office of Education.
In 1999, Alpine created a new model at Orchard Elementary School with Spanish
immersion starting in second grade as a gifted program. The change was made in an
effort to accommodate growing political pressure during the time period regarding
concerns about English language achievement (Bowman, personal communication, June
48
18, 2013). Over the more than three decades of Spanish immersion in Alpine School
District, programs would start and sometimes stop due to the transience of administrators,
teachers, and students. Finding and retaining high-quality and experienced Spanish
teachers was a consistent challenge for principals. Because they were heavily teacher
dependent, programs waned as teachers moved on and administrators lacked commitment
to the program. Similarly, student attrition caused conflict in the schools housing Spanish
immersion programs. Students often had to leave the program for various reasons, and
administrators struggled to justify classrooms and teachers dedicated to Spanish
immersion considering small class sizes in the upper grades (Taylor, personal
communication, June 7, 2013).
The successful continuation of Spanish classes for immersion students at the
middle school level varied from school to school. While some secondary schools and
teachers were deeply committed to the program, other schools failed to support these
classes with a shrinking number of secondary immersion students (Bowman, personal
communication, June 18, 2013). Increasing pressure from the state to test in English in
the early grades also disadvantaged total immersion programs, which concentrated on
Spanish early on. This pressure may have contributed to the overuse of English by some
teachers who were held accountable for student performance on English exams. By 2009,
only Cherry Hill, Orchard, and Harvest Elementary Schools would still offer total
immersion in Spanish (Bowman, personal communication, June 18, 2013).
In addition to Alpine School District, other districts created immersion programs
throughout the state. In 1999, growing concern for English Language Learners at
Timpanogos Elementary School in Provo School District led Principal Erin Sauls and
49
team members Tami Orr Heath and Ana Farias to research language education models
that could improve student achievement (Farias, personal communication, June 20, 2013).
After attending a conference in Vancouver and witnessing Canadian immersion firsthand,
administrators at Timpanogos Elementary applied for a small grant and began a two-way
Spanish immersion program in the fall of 1999. The program initially followed a one-teacher
model, but it slowly transitioned to a 50/50, two-teacher model beginning in
kindergarten, with balanced numbers of native English and Spanish speakers (Diane
Bridge, personal communication, June 20, 2013). At the beginning, Spanish and English
were divided 50/50 on a daily basis, but later the program implemented a one-week
model where students spent one week in Spanish and then one week in English.
Eventually, the program evolved into two weeks of Spanish followed by two weeks of
English. Dale Porter worked as principal from 2001 to 2004; he was later replaced by
Diane Bridge, who is principal today. Like Alpine School District, Timpanogos also
struggled with student attrition, difficulty finding qualified teachers, and articulation into
middle school. By third grade, the two classrooms always had to be collapsed into one
classroom and by seventh grade only a handful of students remained. The school also
dealt with a deep division between the community and staff who were involved in the
program and those who were not (Bridge, personal communication, June 20, 2013).
Shortly after Timpanogos started its two-way immersion program, Salt Lake
School District opened Spanish immersion at Jackson Elementary and Emerson
Elementary. Both schools offered two-way, 50/50 Spanish immersion programs
beginning in kindergarten with literacy, math, science, and social studies taught daily in
both languages. Jackson offered a traditional two-way program as a Title I school, while
50
Emerson Elementary School’s program was geared towards gifted and talented students.
With a diverse student body, one of Salt Lake City School District’s goals was that “dual
immersion classrooms bring together students from different languages, racial, ethnic,
and socioeconomic backgrounds [and] allow students to learn firsthand about cultures
that are different from their own” (Salt Lake City Schools website). The district set strict
time requirements for literacy instruction in each language, committing that English
Language Learners would be reading on-grade-level in their native language and in the
target language by third grade or they would be offered additional language arts time
through differentiated instruction.
After working as principal of Timpanogos Elementary School in Provo School
District, Dale Porter later relocated to St. George and started Spanish immersion at Dixie
Sun (formerly Dixie Downs) Elementary in Washington School District. Despite some
resistance from a few board and community members, Porter saw dual language
immersion as an opportunity to improve student achievement at the Title I school, which
had high rates of mobility and a high population of native Spanish speakers. In January
2006, the school board approved a plan for Dixie Sun to begin two-way, 50/50 Spanish
immersion through a whole-school model. Acting as a magnet school, Dixie Sun became
the first whole-school immersion program in the state when it officially began in the fall
of 2006.
For the 30 years between 1979 to 2009, Utah’s immersion programs were
established as the result of an educator or parent group who went to the local school
board and advocated and fought for Spanish immersion. Programs were supported by the
local communities through grassroots efforts, which often lacked significant financial
51
resources and professional development. Though there was some level of collaboration
between the immersion schools, individual teachers and principals were often burdened
with the significant responsibility of creating curriculum and implementing immersion
without a network of support (Bowman, personal communication, June 18, 2013).
Gregg Roberts and Granite School District
With no precedent of state legislated language immersion programs, Gregg
Roberts is widely acknowledged and credited as the visionary who made Utah’s dual
language immersion programs what they are today: a massive network of standardized,
state-sponsored programs following a research-proven model that is both replicable and
sustainable. A long-time resident of Utah, Roberts was a student of history, French, and
comparative literature who traveled extensively across the globe while he owned and
operated a world travel business. With fifteen years of teaching experience, primarily in
French, he started working as the World Language Specialist in the Granite School
District offices in 2002. Colleagues state that because Roberts did not follow the
traditional path for educational administration, he had an innovative spirit and a unique
ability to think outside of the box. Roberts’s interpersonal skills allowed him to build a
network of trusted advisors and experienced language teachers on whom he would later
rely as he was building the state-wide language program. With political savvy and a gift
for networking, he also knew how to bring people together from all sectors—politics,
business, and education—to create broad foundational support for language education in
Utah. Using this support, he would go on to create the first state initiative for dual
language immersion in the nation, providing state funding, professional development, and
standardized curriculum for nearly 100 schools.
52
At the time of Roberts’s appointment as Granite School District’s World
Language Specialist in 2002, the district did not have language instruction at the
elementary level but was interested in starting a program. They began by researching
established immersion models around the state and visiting schools in Salt Lake City
School District, which included an immersion program for gifted and talented students at
Emerson Elementary School and a traditional Spanish immersion program at Jackson
Elementary School. They also headed to David School District, where Ofelia Wade was
one of two principals who had recently started organizing new 50/50 model programs.
Ofelia Wade and Davis School District. Originally from Cuba, Wade grew up in
Miami, Florida, and attended Coral Way School, the pioneering two-way bilingual
program that was developed by Cubans in Miami to help their children maintain Spanish.
In 1987, after several years as a classroom and special education teacher and reading
specialist, Wade became an elementary school principal in Davis School District with a
deliberate mission to make language education available during the school day. She
began by purchasing a television program to teach fifteen minutes of Spanish a day and
later developed before and after school programs in Spanish. In 2003, Wade became
principal at a new school in Farmington called Eagle Bay Elementary. When Craig Poll,
assistant superintendent of Davis School District, asked if any principals would be
interested in developing a language program, Ofelia Wade and Principal Becky Hunt
from Sand Springs Elementary in Layton were the only two to respond.
In 2004, Poll, Wade, and Hunt began their search for a language education model
by visiting a Spanish program at Rocky Mountain Elementary School in Alpine School
District. They were excited to see Spanish immersion in action; however, they felt that
53
the one-teacher model was poor as they witnessed excessive code-switching between
English and Spanish, which they felt resulted in a lack of student proficiency. Following
the visit, Hunt and Wade immersed themselves in research and began calling language
educators from all over North America. Since the 1965 St. Lambert program, Canada had
become an international leader in language immersion, with significant research coming
out of McGill University and French immersion programs from coast to coast. Across the
United States, programs were beginning in foreign languages like Spanish and French
and indigenous languages like Ojibwe. Programs continued to be islands— they were
heavily dependent on individual teachers and district specialists who were passionate
about immersion education, yet they often lacked the infrastructure to be replicable and
sustainable.
Though programs in the United States lacked state and federal government
support, organizations such as the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), headquartered
in Washington, D.C., were conducting research and encouraging language education
across the country. Officials at CAL directed Hunt and Wade to the Center for Advanced
Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) at the University of Minnesota, widely
accepted as one of the leading research institutions for immersion in the United States. At
the same time, legendary immersion researcher, Fred Genesee, from McGill University in
Canada, recommended that they contact Tara Fortune, the Immersion Projects
Coordinator at CARLA.
Tara Fortune played an instrumental role in coaching Hunt and Wade through the
process of starting a program: opening the world of immersion literature to them, setting
up site visits, and guiding them as they created a one-year plan and a formal proposal to
54
be presented to the district school board. After a year of planning that included visits to
other immersion schools across the country, they had a final proposal that outlined a
50/50 model program that would be implemented at two schools in Davis School District.
In this 50/50 model, students would spend half the day in an English classroom with an
English teacher and the other half of the day in a Spanish classroom with a Spanish
teacher. The school board approved the proposal in 2005, and the district threw its
support and trust behind Hunt and Wade. From the beginning, Hunt and Wade knew that
they wanted to implement the 50/50 immersion model. They did not feel that their
community would accept the 90/10 model because parents would be concerned about the
development of English language literacy. The school board agreed and provided them
with $20,000 to continue developing their program during the planning year.
Site visits to immersion schools across the country helped inform Hunt and Wade
in the development of the program. They went to Minnesota several times to visit
elementary schools and classrooms, as well as to attain information regarding the model
and pedagogy from CARLA. They also took district officials with them to visit the CAL
headquarters in Washington D.C. and Francis Scott Key Elementary, another Spanish
immersion school in Arlington, Virginia. Visits and research informed them as they
started creating a scope and sequence and matrix of language skills, developing lessons
with a template emphasizing language objectives, and translating the district math
program into Spanish.
Pilot Programs Launch. It was during this planning period that Gregg Roberts
visited Wade at Eagle Bay Elementary School as part of a series of visits to immersion
schools throughout Utah. Roberts was excited about the possibility of starting immersion
55
in Granite School District and was deeply impressed by Wade and the team of educators
who had been involved in writing lesson plans and translating materials. During the
2005–2006 school year, Wade and Hunt had organized a public relations campaign to
make their community aware of the new program. Cultural programs with performances
and food were held at the school, and Tara Fortune came to give a presentation to parents
regarding immersion research and practice. After two years of intense research and
planning, Eagle Bay Elementary and Sand Springs Elementary each launched a
kindergarten and first-grade program in 2006 with enough in-boundary students to fill the
program and a handful on the waiting list. One year later, the program was a huge success
and the waiting list had exploded.
In 2006, the Granite District’s school board gave permission for Roberts to do a
two-school pilot immersion program patterned after the one that Wade and Hunt had
launched in Davis School District. After their own planning year, Granite School District
started first-grade Spanish programs at Vista Elementary in Taylorsville and at William
Penn Elementary in Salt Lake City in the fall of 2007. Each school’s first-grade program
consisted of a cohort of 55 to 58 students divided between two classrooms, with most
students coming from within the Granite School District boundaries. Neither school
district had any idea that the model that they were implementing would be replicated
throughout the state within a few short years.
State Involvement
Also at this time, a small committee composed of four world language district
specialists began meeting at the Utah State Office of Education (USOE) to discuss issues
in language education. Representatives from Alpine School District, Granite School
56
District, Davis School District, and Murray School District met with state supervisors as
a committee that would eventually become the Utah World Languages Coordinators
Committee. In late 2005, the state supervisor responsible for language education left the
Utah State Office of Education, leaving an empty spot for a World Language Specialist,
but not enough funds to hire someone full-time. The USOE approached the committee
and asked who could fill the position and everyone in the room pointed to Roberts.
Roberts filled the position on a temporary basis from February to July of 2006, when he
officially began splitting his contract between Granite School District and the Utah State
Office of Education.
Soon after transitioning into his new role, Roberts received a call from the
governor’s office, requesting a meeting regarding language education. In that meeting,
Roberts met with Governor Jon Huntsman and Senator Howard Stephenson, who
suggested that French and German were the languages of the past and that Spanish and
Chinese were the languages of Utah’s future. They tasked Roberts with creating a
distance education program that would help them get Chinese and Arabic into high
schools, a program that was later written into legislation by Senator Stephenson. One of
the first meetings that Roberts conducted took place at Brigham Young University in
Provo, where he met John Rosenberg, dean of the college of humanities, who would
quickly become a supporter of dual language immersion throughout the state. Several
important players in Chinese and Arabic were in the meetings, including Dana Bourgerie,
an associate professor of Chinese, and his secretary, Sandra Talbot, who together were
responsible for BYU’s Chinese Language Flagship program.
57
With significant experience working on grants as the assistant to a Harvard
professor, Sandra Talbot had quickly become much more than a secretary in the Chinese
language department at BYU. Talbot worked with the National Language Flagship Team
and BYU’s flagship team to run a grant-based program that helped non-native Chinese
speakers take accelerated and individualized Chinese classes in their specific fields, such
as medicine, law, or engineering. The National Language Flagship Team was interested
in supporting K–12 language education and had disseminated a request for proposals
(RFP) for a K–12 Chinese grant. At the time, Talbot had searched throughout the state for
someone that would be willing to work with BYU’s Chinese Flagship; however, she
could not find an interested party and the grant went to the University of Oregon and
Portland Public Schools. Though the meeting between Roberts and Talbot was too late
for the Flagship’s K–12 RFP, it began an important collaboration between Roberts and
Talbot that would impact the future of dual language immersion in the state.
Governor Huntsman and Senator Stephenson. In March 2007, Senator
Stephenson helped pass two bills that would prove critical to the future development of
language programs across the state. Senate Bill 2 officially provided $100,000 of ongoing
funding for a full-time World Language Specialist, a position that had previously been
half-time. This allowed Gregg Roberts to come to the Utah State Office of Education as a
full-time employee instead of working half time for Granite School District and half time
as a state specialist. The second bill, Senate Bill 80, provided $230,000 of funding over
six years to create the Critical Language Pilot Program for Chinese and Arabic in 20
secondary schools across Utah. As a result of Senate Bill 80, Roberts and Talbot began
launching the EdNet program in Chinese in 20 schools across the state. To run the
58
program, Talbot found a charismatic Chinese teacher, Justin Lin, who taught Chinese to a
video camera in a small room in the Kennedy Center on BYU campus. The interactive
videos were then transmitted to approximately 60 secondary schools across the state so
students could learn Chinese.
With the program in full swing, Governor Huntsman’s office requested that
Roberts come back to give the governor a full update on the development of Chinese in
the state. After a presentation by the secondary Chinese students, Roberts commented to
Senator Stephenson that if they were really serious about language instruction, they
needed to start the children younger and get more students involved at a lower cost. He
explained that Granite School District and Davis School District were running immersion
programs in Spanish and that the same model could be duplicated in Chinese. Right
around this time, Roberts had also visited Michael Bacon, the Chinese Flagship Director
in Portland Public Schools, in conjunction with the University of Oregon, who had
implemented Chinese instruction through elementary language immersion.
Senate Bill 41. With the success of the secondary Chinese programs, Governor
Huntsman and Senator Stephenson were ready for Roberts to start elementary language
immersion programs. At their request, lawyer Dee Larson drafted Senate Bill 41 in 2008
to serve as a modification to the previous Senate Bill 80, also known as the Critical
Languages Program, and to establish a new, state-wide dual language immersion pilot
program. The Critical Languages portion of the bill provided continued funding for the
teaching of critical languages—defined by the federal National Security Language
Initiative as including Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Farsi, Hindi, and Korean—at the
secondary level. As designated by Section 1 of the bill, critical language courses could be
59
taught by visiting teachers and assisted by fluent paraprofessionals through EdNet (the
state's two-way interactive video and audio system), through the Electronic High School,
or through traditional instruction.
Section 2 of Senate Bill 41 proposed funding for a pilot program of dual language
immersion in 15 elementary schools. Following the model of Davis and Granite School
Districts, the bill stated that the immersion program would offer 50% of the instruction in
English and 50% of the instruction in the target language, beginning in kindergarten or
first grade, with the intention of adding one grade each year. Though Huntsman and
Stephenson initially intended for the immersion programs to be in Chinese, Roberts
pushed for Spanish and French (his own second language). In the end, the bill provided a
monetary incentive to 15 schools divided among Spanish (six schools), Chinese (six
schools), French (two schools), and Navajo (one school).
During the 2008 general legislative season, Senate Bill 41, “The International
Education Initiative – Critical Languages Programs,” was introduced by Chief Sponsor
and State Senator Howard Stephenson, with Bradley Last as the house sponsor. When
Stephenson introduced the legislation, it stalled due to tensions between Stephenson and
other legislators relating to other bills. However, at the midnight hour, Stephenson and
Deputy Superintendent Larry Shumway were able to push the immersion bill through
with a unanimous vote of 75–0. The written legislation provided a total of $750,000 to
the two programs, with $480,000 designated for the Critical Language Program ($6,000
per critical language taught at up to 60 schools and $100 to $400 per student), and
$270,000 designated for the dual language immersion program, with the latter portion
allotting $18,000 to 15 schools.
60
Myriam Met. With the new legislation safely in place, Roberts needed a
nationally recognized immersion expert to help craft a Utah model to be replicated in
schools around the state. Many of the important connections that Roberts had made as a
district supervisor came through his membership in the National Association of District
Supervisors of Foreign Language (NADSFL). In 2003, Roberts attended an annual
NADSFL conference as the Granite School District World Language Specialist and was
introduced to Dr. Myriam Met, the founder and first president of NADSFL. Met, known
to associates as Mimi, began her career in New York City teaching high school Spanish,
French, and Chinese, later obtaining master’s and doctorate degrees in education. She
moved to Montgomery County School District near Washington, D.C. where she
remained at the district level until 2000, when she became the acting director of the
National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) at the University of Maryland. She began
working as a language and immersion consultant in 1975, focusing solely on consulting
since she retired from the NFLC in 2009. With nearly fifty years of working with all
types of language instruction models at all levels of education, Met is an internationally
known and respected immersion educator.
Naturally, the first person that Roberts contacted to assist in designing and
developing the elementary dual language immersion program was Met, who was in Utah
for the Southwest Conference on Language Teaching (SWCOLT). She met with Roberts
and also conducted a training session in Granite School District regarding immersion for
curriculum directors throughout Utah. Met’s presentation had a strong impact on many
school districts, eventually leading toward a proposal from several school districts to
divide the legislation’s $18,000 per school among more schools to allow for more
61
participation. Also at this time, Roberts visited the Navajo reservation, whose school
expressed disinterest in housing a Navajo immersion program since they already had a
FLES (Foreign Language in Elementary School) program. This meant that Roberts had
14 grants of $18,000 each to distribute; however, due to the increase in interest, 21
schools participated, receiving anywhere from $6,000 to $18,000 each. In addition to
these 21 schools, the two Spanish pilot programs in Davis School District and the two
Spanish pilot programs in Granite School District received state support.
2008–2009 Planning Year
The 2008–2009 school year was slated as a planning year with the opportunity for
administrators to travel and visit other programs throughout the United States. Two of the
most influential visits took place with the Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia and
the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. Fairfax was following a 50/50
model where immersion students would take math, science, and social studies in a target
language classroom and then be dispersed back into normal English classrooms for
English literacy. In this model, there was no English partner teacher to mentor and
collaborate with the target language teacher and also no target language literacy program.
In Montgomery County, immersion classrooms focused on target language literacy while
remaining in the target language at all times through a 90/10 model. Students did not
receive English literacy instruction and were not permitted to speak English after a
certain date, encouraging the use of only the target language in the classroom. After
debriefing, the Utah team decided to combine what they felt were the strengths of each
program. They chose to follow Fairfax’s 50/50 model but incorporate Montgomery
County’s focus on target language literacy. They also decided to create the role of an
62
English partner teacher to create collaboration and cohesion between the students and
teachers involved in dual language immersion.
From the beginning, Roberts had decided that he wanted to follow the 50/50
model in Utah for several reasons. First, the model had been successfully implemented by
Davis School District and later Granite School District and came highly recommended by
Principal Ofelia Wade and the others who had seen the success of Eagle Bay Elementary
and Sand Springs Elementary students. Second, Roberts knew that English language
proficiency would always be a concern for parents, teachers, and administrators. By
keeping 50% of the day in English with a trained English teacher, students would be able
to develop their English literacy skills and receive explicit instruction in the English
language. Third, the 50/50 model involved two classrooms per grade (called a cohort),
allowing for twice as many students to be enrolled in immersion while only dedicating
one full-time employee per grade to the target language. This practicality made the
transition to the program easy and inexpensive while keeping the model sustainable with
minimal effects on the rest of the school population. Roberts felt strongly that there
needed to be consistency across the state, which meant that with a large number of
schools, the model they designed had to be highly replicable and sustainable—
characteristics that were evidenced by the 50/50 model.
The launch of the programs was set for August of 2009. From 2008 to 2009,
Roberts coordinated the planning with the assistance of Sandra Talbot. Mimi Met, who
Roberts calls “the mother of Utah dual language immersion,” became heavily involved as
a consultant in the planning period. Roberts’s vision combined with Met’s experience
allowed them to create a program that would reach a wide audience of youngsters in a
63
highly effective program. Met states, “Gregg Roberts wanted to do what no one had done
before and make immersion a mainstream program, not a boutique program” (Met,
personal communication, December 10, 2012).
As a consultant, Met did not feel it was her place to make decisions in Utah.
Instead, she laid the foundation of research and brainstormed with Roberts regarding
critical decisions points: criteria for staff, finding staff, and allocating resources. Though
Met had more than 30 years of experience working with dual language immersion, she
had always worked at the district or school level. Utah was the first state to implement
dual language immersion as a state-wide, legislatively funded initiative. One fortuitous
situation, which boosted the effectiveness of immersion in Utah, was that the Department
of Curriculum and Instruction and the Department of Educator Licensing were, and
continue to be, housed under the same director at the Utah State Office of Education
called Teaching and Learning. Director Sydnee Dixon, a consistent supporter of dual
language immersion, helped prepare the way for dual language immersion across the
state as she led both departments and encouraged collaboration between curriculum
specialists and licensing staff. This collaboration helped prepare the way for accepting
foreign credentials as a pathway to licensure for international guest teachers.
Governor’s Summits. Also during the planning year, Governor Huntsman held a
series of three summits to discuss issues of importance relating to Senate Bill 41. The
first meeting was the Governor’s Language Summit, held in Salt Lake City on September
16, 2008. Keynote speakers included Governor Huntsman, State Senator Howard
Stephenson, David S. C. Chu, acting under the Secretary of Defense, and Larry Shumway
from the state superintendent’s office. Organized by Gregg Roberts, Sandra Talbot, and
64
Christine Kearl (from the Governor’s Office), the meeting involved both national and
state participants and focused on the theme, “Preparing the Rising Generation of Global
Professionals in Utah.” The purpose of the meeting was to begin the conversation about
language education and its relationship to Utah’s future participation in a global economy.
Attendees included state K–12 administrators, university professors from throughout
Utah, and national world language experts.
The Utah International Education Summit, titled “Capitalizing on Strengths,
Creating New Opportunities,” was held approximately six months later on March 2, 2009,
again in Salt Lake City. Featuring Governor Huntsman and Larry Shumway as keynote
speakers, along with Christine Kearl and Vivien Stewart of the Asia Society, the meeting
was again organized by Roberts, together with Robert Austin of the USOE and Tiffany
Hall, associate director of BYU’s Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education and
Schooling (CITES). In attendance were influential K–16 educators from across the state
who discussed the logistics of implementing language immersion in every level of Utah’s
schools.
The final summit, the Salt Lake City Language Summit, focused on the need for
language skills in the workforce and was held on May 5, 2009. This third summit was
sponsored by the World Trade Center Utah, The Language Flagship, and the Salt Lake
City Chamber of Commerce, and was organized by Lew Cramer from the World Trade
Center Utah, Susan Duggan from the Language Flagship, and Johanna Watzinger-Tharp
from the University of Utah. Fifteen representatives from businesses in Utah attended to
provide their insights and ideas regarding the need for language and cultural skills in
navigating a global economy.
65
Utah Language Roadmap. Together, the three summits provided an opportunity
for collaboration among attendees who were referred to as the “Governor’s World
Language Council.” Attendees included representatives from the Utah State Office of
Education and local Utah school districts, the Utah Governor’s Office, state universities,
the Utah World Trade Center, and businesses from the private sector. The purpose of the
series was to inform the development of a Utah Language Roadmap, which would serve
as an aggressive language education plan to prepare generations of Utah students to enter
a changing global economy for the benefit of Utah’s businesses, education, government
agencies, and citizens (Roberts & Talbot, 2009). Written by Gregg Roberts and Sandra
Talbot, with Christine Kearl, Johanna Watzinger-Tharp, and Lew Cramer acting as
editors, the roadmap was endorsed by the governor, state superintendent, and the Utah
World Trade Center. The roadmap synthesized information obtained through the three
summits and emphasized the need for Utah to prepare its students “with the language and
cultural skills necessary to enter and lead in a global economy” (Roberts & Talbot, 2009,
p. 2). Within the roadmap, eight languages were determined to be essential for Utah’s
economic future: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and
Spanish.
Participants in the summits made four recommendations, which Roberts and
Talbot fleshed out in the roadmap. In Recommendation 1, titled “Opening a Dialogue,”
business owners expressed a need for language skills in the following areas: marketing
and communication, client communications and public relations, customer care and
support, business development and sales, relationship building, business negotiation,
international communications, management issues and human resource management,
66
healthcare, and business documentation. Businesses saw the purposes of developing
world languages as developing trust, understanding of foreign culture and context,
equipping individuals with skills for expansion overseas, and communicating
domestically with non-English-speaking Utah residents. They felt that a lack of language
skills in the workforce resulted in poor public perception in a global market, delays in
business negotiations, and loss of capital, opportunity, production time, expansion, and
account retention.
Recommendation 2, “Teaching and Learning,” defined the Utah K–16 articulation
vision as a dual language immersion program starting in kindergarten, continued study
through middle/junior high school, Advanced Placement credit by ninth grade, the option
of a third world language in high school, and higher education opportunities in world
languages resulting in advanced literacy

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i
Utah Valley University
Mainstreaming Dual Language Immersion:
The Utah Model for Replicable and Sustainable Language Education
A project submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Education
in
Curriculum and Instruction
by
Jamie Lynn Davis Leite
June 2013
ii
Utah Valley University
Graduate Committee Approval
of a research project submitted by
Jamie Lynn Davis Leite
This project has been read by each member of the following graduate
committee and by majority vote has been found to be satisfactory.
_______________________ ________________________
Date Dr. Raquel Cook, Chair
_______________________ ________________________
Date Dr. Baldomero Lago
_______________________ ________________________
Date Dr. Sirpa Grierson
iii
Acknowledgements
Two years ago, when I decided to begin a master’s degree while working as a middle
school English teacher, I had no idea that a string of serendipitous conversations at Utah
Valley University would drastically change the trajectory of my career and life. In Dr.
Brian Waite’s eye-opening ESL class, I learned about a field called dual language
immersion. The following semester, a conversation with Dr. Raquel Cook about language
education led to her becoming my project chair, faithful cheerleader, and dear friend.
Later, a discussion with Dr. Baldomero Lago led to an opportunity for me to interview
Gregg Roberts, triggering a series of events that culminated in me being hired by the
Utah State Office of Education as the Portuguese Director of dual language immersion. I
am deeply indebted to each of these mentors for believing in me and opening doors to
opportunities that I didn’t know existed. I am also thankful for the mentors who came
before them—Dr. Sirpa Grierson at BYU and KathiJo Smith at Provo Canyon School,
who both challenged and stretched me during my six years as a classroom teacher.
I am grateful for my parents—my dad for always valuing education and my mom for
telling me I was a writer from the day I put pen to paper. I’m thankful for my siblings—
Jay, Julie, Jaclyn, and Josh—who have pushed me to be the best I can be. I am especially
appreciative of my sister Julie, who has given me the confidence to be myself without
apologies. I feel beyond blessed to have married my husband, Leo, who has supported me
in all of my educational and professional endeavors for the past 10 years. He has never
acted as though his career were more important than mine, but has instead leaned in at
home as an equal partner in co-parenting and cleaning. I am grateful to my six-year-old
daughter, Isabella, who is the reason I fought for Portuguese dual language immersion in
the first place. She rewards me every day by celebrating the opportunity to learn a second
language in the first grade. I am thankful to my four-year-old son, Nicholas, who has
patiently listened to innumerable phone calls about Portuguese immersion. Finally, I am
grateful to the professors and classmates at Utah Valley University who have inspired me
every Tuesday night for the past two years—especially my friends Katie, Brook, Natalie,
and Ashlee for keeping me company on this journey.
Finally, I would like to thank the many people who have made Utah dual language
immersion possible. Their names are included throughout these pages and I applaud them
for their dedication and commitment to providing Utah’s students with opportunities for
language learning. I am especially grateful to all those who participated in this project.
Special thanks to Sandra Talbot for giving me the idea of writing this history. Thank you
to Dr. Diane Tedick whose course at the University of Minnesota provided the research
framework for this project. Many thanks to Dr. Myriam Met, Ann Tollefson, Greg
Duncan, Ofelia Wade, Sandra Talbot, Kaye Murdock, and the many other members of
the Utah DLI team who welcomed me into their world with open arms. Thanks to Lili
Bueno for embarking on this Portuguese adventure with me. Most importantly, I offer my
most heartfelt thanks and appreciation to Gregg Roberts, who gave me the opportunity of
a lifetime when he hired me as Portuguese director. He has quickly become my trusted
advisor, mentor, and friend. I deeply admire him and credit him as the architect of the
structure that is Utah dual language immersion.
iv
Abstract
In 2008, Utah became the first state to legislate funding for the implementation of
dual language immersion programs across the state. With nearly 100 programs and
20,000 students enrolled in Chinese, French, Portuguese, and Spanish immersion in 2013,
Utah is leading the movement for mainstreamed dual language immersion. Many other
state and local educational agencies are looking to Utah for guidance on how to create
and sustain programs; however, up to this point, no one has sufficiently documented the
movement to provide access to the historical background and curricular framework of
Utah’s programs. To better understand Utah’s success, this project details the history of
dual language immersion in the state with specific emphasis on the last decade and the
development of Utah’s 50/50 state model. Using information obtained in interviews,
collaboration, observations, state documents, and meetings, the project provides a
narrative regarding the key events and people in the history and defines the parameters of
the state model with a justification for the decisions made in the state. Also included
within the project is a case study on the implementation of Portuguese as the newest
immersion language in the state. The project offers a consolidated and definitive
document regarding the official state model from the perspective of those who created the
dual language immersion program.
v
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... iii
Abstract ............................................................................................................................. iv
Chapter 1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 1
Problem ....................................................................................................................................... 3
Purpose ....................................................................................................................................... 4
Questions .................................................................................................................................... 4
Methods ...................................................................................................................................... 5
Limitations .................................................................................................................................. 5
Definition of Terms ..................................................................................................................... 5
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 7
Chapter 2 Literature Review ........................................................................................... 8
Bilingualism ................................................................................................................................ 8
Language Education .................................................................................................................. 10
Dual Language Education ......................................................................................................... 13
Effectiveness of Dual Language and Immersion Education ..................................................... 19
Closing the Achievement Gap ................................................................................................... 22
Implementation of Dual Language Immersion .......................................................................... 25
Literacy ..................................................................................................................................... 27
Biliteracy .................................................................................................................................. 32
Chapter 3 Methodology .................................................................................................. 39
Research .................................................................................................................................... 39
Design and Development ........................................................................................................... 40
Validation ................................................................................................................................. 43
vi
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 44
Chapter 4 ......................................................................................................................... 45
History of Utah Dual Language Immersion ................................................................. 45
The Foundation of Utah Immersion .......................................................................................... 46
Gregg Roberts and Granite School District ............................................................................... 51
State Involvement ...................................................................................................................... 55
2008–2009 Planning Year ......................................................................................................... 61
National Influence ..................................................................................................................... 67
Staffing the Programs ................................................................................................................ 69
State Launch .............................................................................................................................. 72
The Utah Model ......................................................................................................................... 81
Utah’s Dual Language Immersion Team ................................................................................... 91
National Support for Immersion ................................................................................................ 97
The Expansion of Utah Immersion ............................................................................................ 99
Portuguese Case Study ................................................................................................. 103
Finding Portuguese Materials .................................................................................................. 105
Publicity .................................................................................................................................. 108
Portuguese STARTALK .......................................................................................................... 110
Teacher Recruitment ................................................................................................................ 112
Current Landscape of Portuguese DLI .................................................................................... 115
Future of Portuguese Immersion ............................................................................................. 117
Chapter 5 Summary and Discussion ........................................................................... 120
References ...................................................................................................................... 123
vii
Appendix A: Sample Lesson Plans .............................................................................. 133
Appendix B: Português de A a Z Literacy Materials ................................................. 145
Appendix C: Portuguese Curriculum Map.................................................................157
viii
List of Tables
Page
1. Dual Language Immersion Program Growth in Utah 78
List of Figures
1.
2.
Program Models Comparison (Thomas & Collier, 2012, p. 93)
Dual Language Immersion Program Growth in Utah
24
78
3.
4.
List of Participating DLI Schools 2013–2014
Utah Dual Language Immersion Instructional Time: Grades 1–3
79
83
5. Utah Dual Language Immersion Instructional Time: Grades 4–5 83
6. Utah Dual Language Immersion Instructional Time: Grade 6 84
7. Utah Dual Language Immersion Proficiency Targets Projections 85
8. Utah Dual Language Immersion Sample Student Proficiency Report 86
9. Utah Dual Language Immersion Assessments Based on the ACTFL
Scale
88
10. Utah Dual Language Immersion State Team 92
11. F-CAP Consortium 2013–2014 98
12. Utah Dual Language Immersion Model Secondary Course
Sequencing
100
1
Chapter 1
“Monolingualism is the illiteracy of the 21st Century.”
Gregg Roberts, World Language and Dual Language Immersion Specialist,
Utah State Office of Education
Introduction
While living in Brazil from 2003 to 2004, I met many Brazilians who seemed
trapped in a life of menial labor and minimal pay juxtaposed with inflated food and rental
costs. The disparity between the rich and poor was characterized by the fact that the
wealthiest 10% of the Brazilian people possessed nearly 50% of the country’s total
income (Brazil – Poverty and Wealth, 2000). Faced with a severely broken public
education system, the top 10% fled to successful private schools while the rest of the
children were left with inefficient schools marked by low attendance, grade repetition,
and steady dropout rates (Cardoso & Verner, 2007).
One of the top educational priorities of Brazil’s private schools has always been
English instruction. Like many around the world, Brazilians have long seen the
acquisition of the English language as a door to economic advantage and intellectual
power, leading to better jobs and a more stable economy. On the other hand, Americans
have been seen as lackadaisical in the acquisition of languages other than English. For
many years, the political and economical strength of the United States allowed
monolingual Americans to work and travel around the world with ease.
2
The recent decline of the American economy has been countered with the rise of
the Brazilian economy. The United States currently has an external debt that is nearly 50
times that of Brazil’s (The World Factbook, 2013), though the sizes of the countries are
comparable. The American dollar that was worth nearly 4 reais (Brazilian dollars) in
2003 is now worth 2 reais. The growing power of many countries around the world, such
as Brazil and China, has opened the eyes of many Americans to the need for international
understanding and experience. Now many Americans recognize that their children will
need a second language to be competitive in today’s global economy and competitive job
market.
While international education proponents have long campaigned for an American
curriculum designed to teach about other cultures and languages (Genesee, 2003), the
U.S. economic recession has encouraged government agencies and businesses to also
recognize the value of bilingualism (Wimmer, 2011). In some states, their money is now
available to support what many educators have worked for through grassroots efforts
across the United States: language immersion programs for American children beginning
in kindergarten and first grade, with the potential of continuing through twelfth grade. At
the forefront of this movement is the state of Utah.
By mainstreaming immersion programs, Utah is helping children reach beyond
our borders by immersing them in two languages, two cultures, and thus, two
perspectives. It has only been four years since Utah legislators secured the money for
immersion education and the state governor set a goal that by 2015, Utah would have
30,000 students enrolled in 100 language immersion programs across the state (Utah
Dual Language Immersion, 2011). Currently, the Utah State Office of Education is
3
poised to achieve this goal one year earlier than initially anticipated. Since 2009, the
National Security Agency has awarded over $700,000 through STARTALK grants to the
Utah State Office of Education for the development of Chinese and Portuguese language
immersion programs. One-third of the United States’ Mandarin Chinese immersion
programs in public elementary schools operate in Utah. Governments around the world
are participating in Utah programs by sending teachers here to work. According to Dr.
Myriam Met, former director of the National Foreign Language Center, “Utah is leading
the nation in immersion education” (Stuart, 2010, p.1).
Problem
In recent years, interest in dual language immersion programs has exploded across
the United States. As the first state to legislate a state initiative with funding for programs,
Utah is leading the charge to create a replicable and sustainable model for 50/50 dual
language immersion. States from around the nation have flocked to Utah to discover why
language immersion programs are thriving in a landlocked state not usually known for its
diversity. In 2012, after working with Utah for over a year, Delaware became the second
state to create an initiative for language immersion. Other state and local educational
agencies have also looked to Utah for guidance on how to create and sustain programs.
With much work to be done, there has not been the time or manpower to document the
movement and provide access to the historical background and curricular framework of
Utah’s programs. In order to better understand Utah’s success, it is vital to record the
inner workings and development of dual language immersion programs within the state,
particularly over the last decade.
4
Purpose
The purpose of this creative project is to provide a history of the conception and
development of Utah’s dual language immersion programs. Included in the history is a
chronological description of the beginnings of immersion in Utah to the current landscape
of immersion, including a case study on the implementation of Portuguese as a new
immersion language. The project serves to represent the perspectives and viewpoints of
the developers of the program with a rationale for the decisions they have made
throughout the establishment of the state model. The policies and strategies that are
identified as successful through this project are available for the use of future dual
language immersion program developers in any country, state, or district.
Questions
In the process of defining a narrative timeline and chronological history of Utah’s
dual language immersion initiative and program, the following questions are addressed:
• What specific events led to a state dual language immersion initiative in Utah?
• How have the parameters of the state model been established?
• Who have been the significant players in Utah dual language immersion and
what have been their individual contributions?
• What events have been pivotal in steering the progression of Utah’s dual
language immersion programs?
• How is a new language program (i.e., Portuguese) implemented as part of the
Utah state model?
5
Methods
To create this history, it was crucial that key players in the history be involved. In
the course of writing, Gregg Roberts, World Language and Dual Language Immersion
Specialist for the Utah State Office of Education, was formally interviewed on several
occasions. He also provided continuous consultation on the information included here.
Official, structured interviews were conducted with an additional eight dual language
immersion team members. Informal collaboration took place with administrators,
specialists, teachers, researchers, and professors from January 2012 through April 2013.
Beyond those people explicitly named in this project, I have collaborated with
innumerable colleagues through countless meetings over the course of the last year.
Limitations
This project is from the perspective of supporters of the program. While some
critiques are included here, the purpose of this project has been to compile a history from
members of the state team responsible for developing the state model. The objective of
this project is to represent the viewpoints of these state team members, so opposing
viewpoints have not been developed. Also, some information that was considered to be
timely or confidential may not have been disclosed.
Definition of Terms
For purposes of clarification, the following definitions of terms will be employed
throughout the scope of this project. These definitions will be developed further in
Chapter 2 of this project.
6
• Target language – the language of content instruction in an immersion
program; sometimes referred to as the immersion language or L2, meaning
second language
• Native language – the language first spoken by a group or individual;
sometimes referred to as L1, meaning first language
• Dual Language Immersion (DLI) – a language education model dedicated to
additive bilingualism and biliteracy with a minimum of 50% of the daily
subject matter taught in the target language at the elementary level
• One-way immersion – a form of dual language immersion in which majority
language speakers learn a foreign or world language
• Two-way immersion – a form of dual language immersion which pairs
balanced numbers of majority speakers with native speakers of the minority
language with time divided between the two languages
Because of Utah’s broad range of dual language immersion programs, including both
one-way and two-way models, the state uses the following nomenclature when defining
its dual language immersion programs, which may or may not be consistent with the
vocabulary used outside of the state.
• 50/50 model – a partial immersion model in which half the instructional day
is taught in English and the other half is taught in the target language
• 90/10 model – a full immersion model in which the early years of the program
are dedicated primarily to the target language, with the gradual introduction of
English instruction over the course of the program
7
• One-teacher model – a language immersion model in which the same teacher
provides instruction in both English and the target language
• Two-teacher model – a language immersion model in which students split
their content instruction between an English-speaking teacher and a target-language-
speaking teacher
Conclusion
As our world becomes more and more interconnected, the United States’
economy and job market require the use of more than one language. The goal of dual
language immersion education is threefold: “bilingualism/biliteracy, cross-cultural
understanding, and high academic achievement for all” (Palmer, 2007, p. 752). As a key
player in the dual language immersion movement, Utah is creating programs for various
languages in schools across the state. Around the country, state and local educational
agencies are interested in replicating Utah’s success for implementing dual language
immersion programs on a state-wide level. For this reason, documenting the historical
development of Utah’s programs will serve to inform and explain the development of
Utah’s dual language immersion model.
8
Chapter 2
Literature Review
To achieve the dual language education goal of “additive bilingualism and
biliteracy and cultural pluralism” (Tedick, Christian, and Fortune, 2011, p. 1), Utah’s
dual language immersion programs have been founded upon research in the areas of
second language acquisition and immersion education—topics to be addressed in the
following pages.
Bilingualism
A bilingual person is defined as someone who uses two or more languages on a
daily basis. Though more than half of the world’s population is considered bilingual, only
twenty percent of Americans fit the same definition (Grosjean, 1989 and 2012). Genesee
(2003) shows evidence that human infants are biologically capable of acquiring two
languages as normally as they are one. Cummins (1981) states that “the bilingual is not
the sum of two complete or incomplete monolinguals; rather he or she has a unique and
specific linguistic configuration” (p. 3). As explained by Bialystok and Hakuta (1994),
the knowledge of two languages is greater than the sum of its parts. This unique
configuration gives bilinguals cognitive flexibility, an intellectual advantage that involves
enhanced abilities to solve problems and process abstract information (Bialystok,
Shenfield, & Codd, 2000).
Additional languages beyond a person’s native language can be acquired
simultaneously (at the same time) or sequentially (one after another). Additive
bilingualism views the acquisition of the second language (L2) as a positive,
complementary process, while subtractive bilingualism sees the same process as a
9
competition (Lee, 1996). Throughout the United States, the teaching of English to native
speakers of other languages has been a “phenomenon of ‘subtractive bilingualism’”
(coined by Wallace Lambert) (Wong-Fillmore, 1991, p. 323). With a traditional emphasis
placed on assimilation, many Americans value English and see other languages as
threatening. Dabbling in European languages such as French and German may be
considered an intellectual pursuit; however, Spanish speakers have often been the target
of criticism and prejudice.
The benefits of being bilingual are numerous and are supported by over forty
years of research. Fully proficient bilinguals exhibit increased problem solving skills,
pattern recognition, and divergent thinking, with greater cognitive flexibility and
enhanced sensitivity to verbal and non-verbal cues (Tedick, 2012b). Research by
Bialystok (2008) shows that bilingual children are able to solve problems with conflicting
or misleading information at an earlier age and more quickly than monolinguals,
demonstrating greater executive control and enhanced inhibitory control (as cited in
Tedick, 2012b). According to Cenoz and Valencia (1994) and Sanz (2000), bilingual
students also acquire a third or fourth language with more ease (as cited in Tedick,
2012b).
Genesee (2003) states that a renaissance in language learning is occurring due to
the personal, socio-cultural, economic, and political incentives that bilingualism provides.
One of the most compelling reasons for learning a second language is the globalization of
business and commerce. Industries are moving their offices to other countries and
working in cities around the world. Individuals move voluntarily and are studying or
working abroad more frequently. Electronic communication through the Internet has
10
increased the need for speakers of more than one language (Genesee, 2003). Met (2004)
states that despite a growing population of English speakers, it is estimated that only one-fourth
of the world’s population is competent in English. Beyond economic reasons, she
states that language learning is important for diplomacy, national security, international
law enforcement, humanitarian aid, and emergency preparedness (p. 214).
Language Education
Around the world, becoming bilingual at a young age is a common practice. In
Europe, most children study second, third, or even fourth languages during elementary
school, often through forms of language immersion. In the United States, foreign
language education has typically been concentrated at the secondary level with surveys
showing that approximately 91% of high schools and 58% of middle schools offer
courses in foreign languages (Rhodes & Pufahl, 2009). Prior to 1997, Spanish, French,
and German were the most commonly taught foreign languages; since 1997, Spanish and
Chinese instruction have steadily increased as French and German instruction have
declined. Less than one-third of elementary schools in the United States offer foreign
language instruction (Branaman & Rhodes, 1997; Rhodes & Pufahl, 2009).
Rhodes and Pufahl (2009) divide elementary language instruction into three
program types: language-focused programs, often called Foreign Language in the
Elementary School (FLES); exploratory programs, referred to as Foreign Language
Experience or Exploratory (FLEX); and immersion programs. FLES and FLEX programs
are pull-out programs where students have a language class for a specific number of
minutes each week (Met, 2008a). In 2008, 39% of public elementary school foreign
language programs were language focused, 47% were exploratory, and 14% were
11
immersion (Rhodes & Pufahl, 2009). Only 39% of all elementary school language
programs report an articulation from elementary language programs into secondary
programs. Rhodes and Pufahl (2009) cite the lack of long-sequence K–12 language
programs as one of their chief concerns about language education, along with inequitable
access for students to language programs, and a severe shortage of qualified language
teachers.
Immersion programs differ from language focused or exploratory language
programs in that they provide content-based instruction (CBI), meaning that the target
language is the vehicle for teaching academic content such as mathematics, language arts,
science, or social studies. Content-based instruction can be offered through several
models including theme-based, in which language skills are taught around topics or
themes; sheltered, in which instructors use special strategies for making input
comprehensible; and adjunct, in which a language course and a content course are linked
for instruction (Snow, 2005). Language focused and exploratory programs do not offer
content-based instruction, but rather teach about a language and may or may not offer all
instruction in the target language. Immersion has steadily increased over the past three
decades, with only 2% of elementary school language programs being immersion
programs in 1987 to 8% in 1997, and finally 14% in 2008 (Rhodes & Pufahl, 2009). The
number of one-way immersion programs in the United States has grown from 3 programs
in 1971 to 263 in 2006, and finally to 492 in 2012 (Branaman & Rhodes, 1997; Rhodes &
Pufahl, 2009; Tedick 2012).
Although it is not the focus of this literature review, it is essential to acknowledge
the important area of English as a Second Language (ESL) in a conversation about
12
language education in the United States. English is taught as a second language in
classrooms around the United States to English Language Learners (ELLs), sometimes
also called English Learners (ELs). Like the forms of language education discussed here,
ESL can be taught through a variety of methods. ESL program models include ESL pull-out,
usually used in elementary school; an ESL class period, common in secondary
schools; or an ESL resource center, acting as a variation on the pull-out model (Rennie,
1993). Other ESL program models may include sheltered instruction and content-based
instruction—which require content teachers to use a wide range of strategies to make the
subject matter comprehensible and accessible in a new language for students (Rennie,
1993).
ESL programs are sometimes termed bilingual programs in that they allow or
encourage the use of each student’s native language, in addition to English, for
instruction during the school day. In general, a bilingual education program may include
any program in which academic content is taught in two languages. Early-exit bilingual
programs, also called transitional bilingual programs, use the native language in an
attempt to mainstream students as quickly as possible, often resulting in a subtractive
form of bilingualism (Rennie, 1993; Thomas and Collier, 2012). Late-exit bilingual
programs encourage the use of the native language for an extended period of time. A
third form of bilingual education, known as a developmental bilingual program, is
additive in nature and therefore considered dual language education, which will be
discussed later in this chapter.
Though considered a form of bilingual education, dual language and immersion
education proponents have distanced themselves from this term in recent years as
13
bilingual education became synonymous with troubled transitional bilingual programs of
the past (Crawford, 2007). Similarly, the name of bilingual education suffered during
politically charged English-only debates that eventually resulted in legislation against
bilingual education in California, Massachusetts, and Arizona. In these states,
developmental bilingual programs have been eliminated, and waivers are needed for
participation in two-way programs (Tedick, 2012a). Similarly, the No Child Left Behind
Act eliminated all references to bilingualism as an educational goal. Proponents of
English-only legislation argue that students need to be mainstreamed as quickly as
possible with the goal of English fluency and American assimilation. Proponents of
bilingual education maintain that this argument stems from “(1) prejudice against Latinos
and other linguistic minorities, and (2) misunderstanding of bilingual education”
(Crawford, 2007).
Dual Language Education
Aware of the past challenges of bilingual education, dual language and immersion
programs have attempted to overcome the problems of bilingual education by providing
students with an environment of additive bilingualism. Met (2004) explains that best
practice for language learning requires time, cognitive engagement, real-life motivation,
continuity of learning, and cultural interaction. Dual language immersion aims for best
practice in each of these areas. Lyster (2007) writes,
[Dual language and immersion education] is a form of bilingual education
that aims for additive bilingualism by providing students with a sheltered
classroom environment in which they receive at least half of their subject-matter
instruction through the medium of a language that they are learning
14
as a second, foreign, heritage, or indigenous language. In addition, they
receive some instruction through the medium of a shared primary
language, which normally has majority status in their community. (p. 8)
Under the umbrella of dual language education, four program models exist: (1)
developmental bilingual education, (2) heritage language immersion, (3) one-way
(foreign language) immersion, and (4) two-way immersion (Christian, 2011).
Developmental bilingual programs aim for additive bilingualism using both English and
the minority language to teach content to a linguistically homogenous group of students.
An example of a developmental bilingual model would be a program that teaches
academic content in both English and Spanish with the goal of bilingualism and biliteracy.
The other three forms of dual language education—one-way, two-way, and
heritage programs—teach language through immersion (Fortune and Tedick, 2008).
Immersion education is distinguished from other forms of language instruction in that it
provides enriched education through additive bilingualism and content-based instruction
in a target language for at least 50% of the day, with support for the first language (Cloud,
Genesee, & Hamayan, 2000). Fortune and Tedick (2008) expand this definition by
carefully qualifying immersion programs with five criteria: (1) use of the target language
for 50% of the day in elementary school or with at least two year-long content courses in
the target language during the secondary grades, (2) promotion of additive bilingualism
and biliteracy, (3) employment of teachers who are completely proficient in the
language(s) they teach, (4) support for the students’ first language, and (5) clear
separation of teacher use of instructional languages (p. 10). Further distinguishing
features of well-implemented programs of immersion, according to Fortune and Tedick
15
(2008), include the following: content-driven and language-attentive curriculum;
integrated language, culture, and content; cognitively and linguistically challenging tasks;
instructional strategies with scaffolding; interactions with peer-peer communication; and
cooperative learning techniques to build relationships (p.10).
Similarly, internationally renowned immersion researchers Swain and Johnson
(1997) developed a list of core and variable features of immersion programs, which was
updated by Swain and Lapkin (2005) as follows: (1) the immersion language is the
medium of instruction; (2) the immersion curriculum parallels the local L1 curriculum;
(3) overt support is given to all home languages; (4) the program aims for additive
bilingualism; (5) exposure to the immersion language is largely confined to the
classroom; (6) students enter with similar levels of proficiency in the immersion
language; (7) the teachers are bilingual; (8) the classroom culture recognizes the cultures
of the multiple immigrant communities to which the students belong (p. 172).
Immersion education can also be categorized according to the goals of each
program. One-way or foreign language immersion teaches a minority or world language
to majority language speakers for the purpose of enrichment and increased cultural
sensitivity (Tedick, 2012a). Two-way immersion works with native speakers of two
different languages and backgrounds, with the goal of maintenance of the first language
(for minority language speakers) and enrichment in the target language (for majority
language speakers). The classroom is ideally created with a 1:1 ratio so that
approximately half of the class speaks each of the languages, although a 1:2 ratio still
qualifies within the recommended minimum ratio. Heritage language programs aim to
teach a target language to students who possess a cultural or linguistic connection to that
16
language but lack language proficiency. As a form of heritage language programs,
indigenous language immersion aspires to revitalize a language and culture that is an
endangered language spoken by Native Peoples (Fortune & Tedick, 2008). One of the
most successful programs of indigenous language revitalization has taken place in New
Zealand over the past several decades as schools have offered immersion in the Maori
language. In the United States, the Hawaiian language has undergone a similar process on
a smaller scale. Native Americans have also established indigenous programs in Ojibwe,
Diné (Navajo), Yup’ik, Chinook, Dakota, Inupiaq, and other Native American languages.
One-way immersion introduces a foreign or second language to an English-dominant
child in an effort to make him or her functionally proficient in that language.
One-way immersion can be early immersion, beginning in kindergarten or first grade;
middle immersion, starting in fourth or fifth grades; or late immersion, starting in sixth,
seventh, or eighth grades. In the United States, only early immersion programs exist.
Programs may be considered total immersion or full immersion with 90% to 100% of the
subject matter taught in the target language for the first few years of the program, or
partial immersion with a minimum of 50% of the curriculum being taught in the target
language (Lyster, 2007). One-way programs may exist as a single strand of immersion
classrooms within a larger school, or they may involve the entire school population
(Tedick, 2012a).
As of October 2011, the Center for Applied Linguistics had identified 492 one-way
immersion programs (including indigenous language programs) in 22 different
languages in the United States (Tedick, 2012a). Utah is the state with the highest number
of one-way or foreign language immersion programs, followed by Minnesota, Hawaii,
17
Louisiana, Oregon, California, and then Virginia. Spanish is the most common language
of instruction, accounting for 45% of the immersion programs, followed by French at
22%, and Mandarin Chinese at 13%, with 19 other languages represented in various
immersion schools across the nation such as Japanese, German, Italian, Russian, Arabic,
Greek, Norwegian, Cantonese, Danish, Salish, Swedish, Vietnamese, and the indigenous
languages previously mentioned. Though not referenced in these numbers, the United
States also has several Portuguese immersion programs, specifically in the Northeast
(Rhode Island, Massachusetts), Florida, and most recently, Utah. Because the CAL
directory relies on self-reporting, these numbers are suspected to be lower than the actual
number of programs.
Two-way immersion combines linguistically heterogeneous students in an effort
to move English-dominant children towards a second language while native speakers of
the minority language move towards English. Two-way immersion is categorized by the
percentage of instruction in each language, with the first number representing the
minority language. A 50/50 model, for example, would entail half the day’s instruction in
the target language and the other half in the native language. However, younger children
are often involved in the 90/10 or 80/20 models, which emphasize the native language
initially, with a gradual increase in target language instruction as children progress
through the grade levels (Ordoñez, 2004).
Research shows that the two-way immersion model is the most effective program
model for minority language children (Thomas and Collier, 2012), and ample data
suggests that it has the potential to begin closing the achievement gap between students
of different racial, linguistic, and socioeconomic statuses. Cummins (1981) states,
18
“Schools have contributed directly to minority children’s academic difficulties by
undermining their cultural identity, attempting to eradicate their L1, and exposing them to
incomprehensible context-reduced input in English” (p. 36). One of the reasons that dual
language immersion programs are desirable is that they allow for each language to be
nurtured and constantly used to allow for progress in each language. The commonly held
notion that English Language Learners should eradicate their first language and learn
only English actually negatively impacts the child’s home and family life (Wong-
Fillmore, 1991). In reality, nurturing both languages is advantageous to the child and
community. Research by Lindholm-Leary (2007) shows that English Language Learners
who participated in two-way immersion programs had more positive and confident
attitudes towards school, college, and the learning of two languages with a lower
likelihood of dropping out of school. By the end of elementary school, nearly all ELL
students in these two-way immersion programs were rated as proficient in both languages,
and by tenth grade, nearly all students tested high enough on the Advanced Placement
(AP) Spanish test to receive AP credit (Lindholm-Leary, 2007).
As of June 2013, the Directory of Two-Way Immersion Programs in the United
States listed 421 two-way immersion programs in nine languages, with 390 of the
programs being a combination of Spanish and English. California maintains the largest
number of two-way immersion programs, composing more than a quarter of the total
number of programs. Coming in second, Texas has half the number of programs as
California and is followed by New York, Illinois, and Oregon (Center for Applied
Linguistics, 2011). Though not accurately represented in these data, Utah supports as
many two-way programs as New York (Roberts, personal communication, May 25, 2013).
19
Effectiveness of Dual Language and Immersion Education
Genesee (1994) argues, “There is no doubt that immersion programs are the most
effective approach available to second language teaching in school settings” (p. 9). Met
(2008a) elaborates by stating that immersion is “the least expensive model, which
ironically results in the highest level of language proficiency” (p. 1). Hamayan, Genesee,
and Cloud (2013) cite years of research to prove that students in dual language immersion
programs are capable of reaching high levels of functional proficiency in both the
immersion language and the native language. Genesee (1987, 2004) asserts that these
students academically perform “on par with or above their non-immersion peers on
standardized tests administered in English” (as cited in Tedick, 2012b). Though levels of
functional proficiency in the target language may vary for students in immersion
programs with non-cognate languages, these students still “achieve at or above the level
of same-language peers in English-only programs” (Genesee & Lindholm-Leary, 2013, p.
16). In full immersion models, some students may show lags in English reading and
writing initially; however, within one year of beginning English language arts instruction,
these lags disappear (Genesee & Lindholm Leary, 2013).
Evidence exists to show that students from varying socioeconomic and ethnic
backgrounds are also successful in dual language immersion. Lindholm-Leary (2001,
2006) states that Spanish-speaking students in two-way immersion programs outperform
their Spanish-speaking peers in any other type of language program by displaying higher
levels of Spanish and academic English proficiency (as cited in Tedick, 2012b).
Immersion also increases sensitivity for and appreciation of both the native culture and
the immersion culture. Bearse and de Jong (2008) claim that Anglo students see
20
bilingualism as increasing their job opportunities, while Latino students recognize
bilingualism as connecting them to family and roots (as cited in Tedick, 2012b).
Within the United States, language immersion is traditionally concentrated at the
elementary level. This stems from the generally accepted philosophy that early second
language acquisition is preferable to later. Lee (1996) states that early bilingualism is
ideal: “The preschool years in particular are critical to social, linguistic, and cognitive
development” (p. 514). Other factors that make second language acquisition ideal for
younger children include the active participation of the brain’s right hemisphere during
the early years, the higher likelihood of conquering a foreign accent, a tendency towards
more implicit learning instead of explicit learning, and affective considerations such as an
egocentric nature and lack of inhibitions (Brown, 2007).
Cummins’s Threshold Hypothesis (1981) states that there are three theoretical
threshold levels of bilingual proficiency that produce various cognitive effects. In the
lowest level of bilingualism, termed “limited bilingualism,” negative cognitive effects are
shown through underdeveloped proficiency in both languages. Once a bilingual passes
the lower threshold to attain some level of proficiency in the second language, neither
negative nor positive cognitive effects are observed. According to this theory, the highest
level of bilingualism, proficient bilingualism, leads to cognitive benefits. Cummins’s
theory emphasizes the importance of attaining proficiency when learning a language.
Language proficiency should not be confused with fluency. Fluency means the ability of
an individual to communicate in a fluid manner, while proficiency aims for a higher level
of communication including academic language expertise. Research shows that the
21
earlier a child is exposed to a language and the longer the exposure lasts, the higher the
student performance scores are (Cummins, 1981).
At both the elementary and secondary levels, “only a small number of bilingual
programs in the country have the continued maintenance of the first language as an
explicit goal. Hence many English learners receive instructional programs that are too
short-term in focus and are not cognitively or academically challenging” (Alanis &
Rodriguez, 2008, p. 306). Met (2008a) explains that the articulation of language
programs from elementary to secondary is of utmost importance if long-term proficiency
is to be achieved and maintained. This suggests that even though elementary immersion
programs exist, students may not be able to attain proficiency due to a lack of secondary
schools that carry out the initial work begun in elementary immersion programs.
Though opponents of language immersion worry that such schools do not have
the capacity to reach out to all students, including those in special education with learning
disabilities or low student performance scores, Cummins (1981) argues,
Programs that aim to develop a high level of proficiency in two languages
provide greater potential for academic development for all children than
education through the medium of only one language. Whether or not this
greater potential is realized in any particular bilingual program will, of
course, depend on the quality of the program. . . . The enrichment potential
of bilingual education is accessible to all students. (p. 42)
In most situations, dual language immersion is available to a spectrum of students:
English Language Learners, gifted and talented students, and those enrolled in Special
Education with legal documentation of disability in Individualized Education Plans
22
(IEPs) or 504 plans. The cognitive advantages associated with bilingualism are beneficial
to all students. After conducting an exhaustive literature review in this area, Fortune and
Menke (2010) state that there is no solid research that would support prohibiting children
with special needs from immersion programs.
Closing the Achievement Gap
Met (2001) has said that the historical omission of intensive language education in
the United States has contributed to a growing achievement gap between American
students and their peers in other countries. Within the United States, students who have
access to foreign language education are more likely to be successful readers with higher
scores on standardized measures of reading and mathematics even if they come from
high-poverty backgrounds (Met, 2001).
As previously mentioned, one of the most important research findings regarding
dual language immersion is the potential of both one-way and two-way models to close
the achievement gap for ELLs. Collier and Thomas (2004) have been collecting and
analyzing data in this area for the past two decades with consistent results that dual
language immersion programs “lead to grade-level and above-grade-level achievement in
second language, the only programs that fully close the gap” (p. 11). In their research of
one-way and two-way programs throughout the country, Collier and Thomas (2004) state
that early dual language immersion programs are expected to close 70% to 100% of the
achievement gap by fifth grade. Dual language immersion programs can do this because
they offer continuous support throughout the many years of a student’s education,
whereas ESL programs aim to mainstream students quickly. Once students are
mainstreamed, they will continue to progress, but may struggle to close the achievement
23
gap completely because they have already started out behind their peers. For this reason,
it is essential that students begin dual language immersion programs as early as possible,
beginning in elementary school when students have enough time to fully close the
achievement gap.
As Collier and Thomas (2004) point out, dual language immersion programs do
not offer watered-down instruction in a special curriculum, but rather give instruction in
thematic units of core academic curriculum. Students who participate in ESL pull-out
programs fall further behind in their core subjects, while dual language immersion
provides language instruction through the core curriculum. Thomas and Collier (2012)
further explain that dual language immersion programs not only close the achievement
gap for English Language Learners, but do so for other groups as well, including Latinos
fluent in English, African Americans, and students of low socioeconomic status.
Improved test scores by these groups show that “fully meeting the needs of historically
underserved and low-scoring groups is an important reason to expand access to dual
language classes for as many student groups as possible” (Thomas & Collier, 2012, p.
112). Figure 1 from Thomas and Collier’s data shows the effectiveness of each form of
English language education.
24
Figure 1: Program Models Comparison (Thomas & Collier, 2012, p. 93)
25
Implementation of Dual Language Immersion
A successful dual language immersion program happens when “the program
provides an atmosphere that allows students to acquire a second language and learn about
another culture without sacrificing their individual identities” (Alanis & Rodriguez, 2008,
p. 306). Alanis and Rodriguez (2008) define four features of success for immersion
programs (two-way programs in their case): (1) pedagogical equity, (2) effective
bilingual teachers, (3) active parent participation, and (4) knowledgeable leadership and
continuity.
Pedagogical equity occurs when both the native language and the target language
include rigorous content standards, with neither language being promoted over the other.
Effective bilingual teachers implement this pedagogy by highly valuing the philosophy
and goals of immersion while working tirelessly on (1) meaningful, thematic instruction;
(2) active hands-on learning in collaborative groups; and (3) collaborative and
cooperative student interaction in heterogeneous groups (Alanis & Rodriguez, 2008).
Petron (2009) highlights the importance of transnational cultural capital that teachers
from other countries offer. Involving teachers and parents through democratic processes
empowers them with ownership of the program and results in lower turnover for teachers
and students alike. Parent activism helps sustain a program amid challenges as parents
advocate for the program within their own communities. Successful programs also
require a knowledgeable and committed administration to provide continuity of
leadership in initiating and maintaining the program over the years.
Tedick and Fortune (2012) state that a well-implemented program has a content-driven
and language-attentive curriculum including corrective feedback techniques;
26
explicit attention to lexical features within content-driven, communicatively-oriented
instruction; and instruction of grammatical structures with the opportunity for meaningful
use of those structures in the context (as cited in Tedick, 2012d; Lyster, 2007). Culture is
integrated into language and content so that students gain “cultural competence for global
citizenship” (Tedick, 2012d). Though teaching the target language culture is essential, the
culture of the classroom mirrors that of the local community and embraces the cultures of
all students in the program (Tedick, 2012d). Students should be expected to complete
final products for tasks that are both cognitively and linguistically challenging with a
balanced use of instructional scaffolding and a language-rich environment. Teachers
should encourage peer to peer interaction, cooperative learning experiences, and extended
use of the immersion language, while providing for a distinct separation of languages in
which the teacher uses the immersion language only during instructional time (Tedick,
2012d).
Though immersion has a track record for success, there are many challenges in
implementing immersion. Tedick (2012c) categorizes these challenges into five main
areas: (1) immersion language use, (2) immersion language development, (3) academic
and educational challenges, (4) teacher preparation and development, and (5) program
design and implementation. Fortune (2001) states that supporting and encouraging
students in using the immersion language is a constant challenge for teachers (as cited in
Tedick, 2012c). Developing the immersion language can be challenging because
immersion programs are inherently content-driven and lack focus on helping students
achieve language proficiency (Lyster, 2007). Because of this, immersion students may
not attain native-like language skills in that they have a limited range of vocabulary,
27
usage that is not idiomatic, less complex oral language, and persistent grammatical errors
that may have fossilized (Genesee, 2007; Tedick, 2012c). Lyster (1987) also states that
the immersion language tends to become more Anglicized over time (as cited in Tedick
2012).
Finding and training qualified bilingual teachers for dual language immersion
programs is another significant challenge. Teachers may not have the necessary target
language proficiency to teach immersion or they may not have the necessary English
proficiency to navigate an American school and collaborate with an English-speaking
faculty. Others may not have the official teaching credentials necessary to teach in public
schools, or if they do, their teacher preparation may have insufficiently prepared them to
teach in an immersion classroom. Many of the teachers who satisfy all of these
requirements may need visas in order to be able to work in the United States. Other
challenges in planning an immersion program include the following: finding authentic
and developmentally appropriate materials; ensuring alignment with district and state
standards; developing curriculum; sustaining student motivation; dealing with attrition,
late entries, student scheduling, transportation, and staffing; clustering with teams; and
encouraging parent involvement (Montone & Loeb, 2003; Tedick, 2012c).
Literacy
In its simplest terms, literacy is the ability to read and write fluently and
accurately (Cloud, Genesee, & Hamayan, 2009). Literacy instruction can be separated
into two schools of thought: the bottom-up approach and the top-down approach. In the
bottom-up approach, children acquire literacy by beginning with the simplest forms of
language—letters and sounds—and working their way up to forming words, phrases, and
28
sentences (Gunning, 2005). The top-down approach looks at language holistically and
advocates learning literacy through higher-order thinking and meaning-making (Cloud,
Genesee, & Hamayan, 2009). Today, comprehensive literacy instruction advocates a
balanced approach with an added emphasis on the importance of comprehension and
meaning-making in literacy (Morrow & Gambrell, 2011).
After a review of quantitative research, the National Reading Panel found five
critical skills for learning to read English: (1) phonemic awareness, (2)
decoding/encoding abilities, (3) vocabulary, (4) fluency, and (5) comprehension
(National Reading Panel, 2000).
Phonemic awareness, a subset of phonological awareness, assesses a child’s
ability to understand the smallest units of spoken language (phonemes) and how they can
be manipulated to form words. It is different from phonics instruction, which teaches
students about how to read or spell using letter-sounds. Phonemic awareness can be
taught in several of the following instructional approaches: providing analogies to known
words, analyzing the relationship to previously learned sounds, embedding phonics into
text reading, spelling words phonemically, or by converting letters to sounds and
synthesizing the sounds into words. These approaches may manifest themselves through
phonemic isolation, identity, categorization, blending, segmentation, or deletion
(National Reading Panel, 2000).
The next critical skill of decoding and encoding is sometimes referred to as
phonological instruction. Decoding is reading—the process of linking letters to sounds
and turning them into words, such as blending phonemes into words (National Reading
Panel, 2000). Words can be read in one of five ways: (1) predicted, (2) sounded out, (3)
29
chunked, (4) read by analogy, or (5) recognized immediately as a sight word (Gunning,
2005). Encoding is the reverse process used in spelling, when sounds are converted to
letters and then words.
The third critical skill, vocabulary, is defined as the words of a language that are
familiar to a person, expressed orally or through print. Vocabulary instruction is vital in
guiding a child toward overall comprehension of a text. The larger a child’s vocabulary is,
the fewer unknown words she or he will encounter in text, leading to increased success
and decreased frustration in reading (National Reading Panel, 2000).
Fluency, the fourth critical skill, gauges a person’s ability to read with “speed,
accuracy, and proper expression” (National Reading Panel, 2000). Fluency has generally
been taught in two ways: first, through guided repeated oral reading, which allows
students to read orally with assistance and feedback from a teacher; and second, through
independent silent reading, which requires students to read individually without guidance
or intervention.
The final critical skill, comprehension, is an active and complex cognitive process
in which readers understand and make meaning as they interact with a text.
Comprehension is highly dependent on students’ vocabulary proficiency and the
preparation of a teacher in comprehension instruction. Comprehension can be taught as
readers learn to monitor their understanding of text, cooperatively learn through reading
strategies, use graphic organizers, answer and generate questions about a text, analyze a
story structure, and summarize the content of a text (National Reading Panel, 2000).
Although many teachers prioritize these five literacy skills in the above order,
research regarding second language learners suggests that instruction should stress
30
primarily the importance of comprehension, followed by vocabulary, phonemic
awareness, decoding/encoding, and fluency (Cloud et al., 2009). Researchers explain that
students naturally acquire fluency in an immersion setting; however, students need
deliberate literacy instruction in comprehension and vocabulary in order to develop the
necessary comprehension skills and expand the number of words they can understand and
produce.
Though much of the No Child Left Behind legislation in education was based on
research done by the National Reading Panel, it should be noted that many reading
experts find the definition of literacy from this study to be lacking due to its
oversimplification of literacy. The Commission on Reading of the National Council of
Teachers of English (NCTE) criticized the National Reading Panel’s report for narrowly
defining reading as a technical skill instead of a “complex and purposeful sociocultural,
cognitive, and linguistic process in which readers simultaneously use their knowledge of
spoken and written language, their knowledge of the topic of the text, and their
knowledge of their culture to construct meaning with text” (p. 1). Focusing only on
statistical research and excluding qualitative research, the National Reading Panel limited
its study of reading to the previously mentioned five competencies, without
acknowledging the broad range of other skills needed to attain high levels of literacy.
Researchers like Shaw (2005) responded to the National Reading Panel stating,
Characteristics of effective reading instruction focus on authentic
experiences with texts, multiple daily reading experiences, explicit
demonstrations of reading strategies, ongoing assessment to inform
instruction, creative and critical student response to texts, inquiry into
31
language study, student collaborations, and partnerships with families to
extend school learning. (as cited in Kucer, 2008, p. 23)
Kucer (2008) looks at literacy as a process with literacy events occurring in four
dimensions: developmental, sociocultural, linguistic, and cognitive. Gee (1996) argues
that the focus should not be placed on language or literacy, but on the social practices,
termed “Discourse.” Gee’s research has emphasized the importance of multiple literacies,
which broadens the definition of literacy to include new “real-world” literacies beyond
traditional reading and writing. Though the National Reading Panel focuses on
“Learning-to-Read,” Brause, Lee, and Moliterno (2008) stress the importance of
integrated, multi-disciplinary, and thematic curriculum instruction, which offers students
real-world experiences of “Reading-to-Learn.”
Braunger and Lewis (2008) push even further beyond the National Reading
Panel’s five competencies by defining thirteen core understandings about learning to
read: (1) reading is an active, cognitive, and affective process; (2) background knowledge
and prior experience are critical; (3) social interaction is essential; (4) reading and writing
develop together; (5) reading involves complex thinking; (6) environments rich in
literacy experiences, resources, and models facilitate reading development; (7)
engagement in the reading task is key; (8) children’s understandings of print are not the
same as adults’ understandings; (9) children develop phonemic awareness and phonics
knowledge through a variety of literacy opportunities, models, and demonstrations; (10)
children learn successful reading strategies in the context of real reading; (11) children
learn best when teachers employ a variety of strategies such as engagement, balanced
approaches, apprenticeship, comprehension, questioning, discussion and response,
32
metacognition, vocabulary, fluency, word identification, independent reading, guided
reading, explicit word study, explicit strategy, oral reading, read aloud, and shared
reading; (12) children need the opportunity to read, read, read; and (13) monitoring the
development of reading is vital to student success.
Biliteracy
In addition to bilingualism and increased cultural awareness and sensitivity,
biliteracy is one of the core goals of a dual language immersion program (Fortune &
Tedick, 2008). Hornberger (1990) defines biliteracy as “any and all instances in which
communication occurs in two (or more) languages in or around writing” (p. 213). Just
like bilingualism, biliteracy may occur simultaneously or sequentially. Simultaneous
biliteracy occurs when first and second language literacies are acquired at the same time
with time allotted for daily literacy instruction in each language. Sequential biliteracy is
found when one language’s literacy program is taught first and the other second.
Immersion programs choosing sequential biliteracy must choose whether to teach the
majority or minority language’s literacy first (Beeman & Urow, 2009). Genesee (2007)
explains that more exposure and instructional time dedicated to the minority language in
immersion usually indicate higher levels of proficiency in that language. However, the
reverse is not true. More exposure and instructional time in English does not necessarily
result in higher levels of English proficiency for immersion students.
Kucer (2008) states that biliterate students are not engaged in two different
processes when reading in two languages as “there is a positive and supportive
relationship between the processes and strategies used in the first and second languages”
(p. 39). Because bilingual and biliterate students face a higher likelihood of encountering
33
unknown grammatical structures, text structures, and vocabulary, they must be prepared
with the necessary strategies to monitor and repair comprehension. Research on biliteracy
has shown that background knowledge is more of an asset to bilingual and biliterate
students than linguistic knowledge (Kucer, 2008). School and home settings that honor
every language help provide students with the cognitive energy that reading in a second
language requires.
Teaching literacy in a second language requires teachers to complete five main
tasks: (1) select appropriate materials to create a print-rich environment, (2) develop oral
language skills to support literacy, (3) ensure instruction is culturally appropriate with
background knowledge, (4) develop important decoding and encoding skills, and (5)
teach important reading (text processing) and writing (text production) skills (Cloud et al.,
2000). When working with students during the early literacy stage, teachers should use
the top-down approach; however, later stages of literacy do best with a combination of
both the top-down and bottom-up approaches, when teachers zoom in on specific skills
and then zoom out to show the context of these skills (Cloud et al. 2000). Bialystok
(2001) defends the need for explicit skills instruction and the absolute importance of
phonological awareness in the social, linguistic, and cognitive skills that children need to
learn to read. Immersion expert Roy Lyster (2007) likewise asserts the need for teaching
explicit skills, a practice he terms “counterbalanced instruction” and defines as
instruction that “requires learners to vary their attentional focus between, on the one hand,
the content to which they usually attend in classroom discourse, and on the other, target
language features that are not otherwise attended to” (p. 4). Lyster stresses that, despite
immersion’s emphasis on content, teachers must focus on the forms of the target
34
language and explicitly correct errors in the second language with more teacher-student
and student-student interaction and less reliance on non-verbal cues to convey meaning.
Teaching literacy in an immersion classroom is also unique because teachers use
content-based instruction. However, content-based instruction alone does not adequately
supply sufficient language instruction (Snow, 2005). Davison and Williams (2001) claim
that to integrate language and content means teachers must focus on two tasks: (1) the
sequencing of the language, and (2) the content and scope of the curriculum (as cited in
Snow, 2005, p. 697). By building on the cornerstones of curriculum and instruction,
assessment, teacher knowledge and training, and student factors, academic literacy can be
developed according to its components of linguistic characteristics, background
knowledge, cognitive knowledge, and knowledge of discourse community (Snow, 2005).
Snow, Met, and Genesee (1989) developed a framework for addressing sequence
and scope, which required teachers to define content-obligatory language and content-compatible
language. As suggested by its title, content-obligatory language is the
language, grammar, vocabulary, and structures that are necessary for mastering the
content, while content-compatible language naturally works with specific content
material. Calling for a balanced approach of language and content with higher-order
thinking skills, Snow, Met, and Genesee (1989) urge teachers to collaborate to create a
coherent and deliberate scope and sequence for language development across the grade
levels integrating content-obligatory and content-compatible language appropriately.
As previously stated, comprehension has been identified as the most important
skill for language learners to work on in second language literacy (Cloud et al., 2000).
For second language reading comprehension, Durgunoglu (1997) defines three factors as
35
leading to higher levels of reading comprehension in the second language: (1) linguistic
knowledge of the second language, (2) literacy skills from the first language, and (3)
prior knowledge of the subject matter (as cited in Bialystok, 2001).
Second to comprehension in priority, vocabulary must be a central focus of any
immersion classroom. Stahl and Nagy (2006) write, “It may overstate the case to say that
vocabulary knowledge is central to children’s and adults’ success in school and life, but
not by much” (as cited in Met, 2008b, p. 54). Vocabulary knowledge, which is best
acquired through both intensive and extensive reading and writing, is a strong predictor
of successful literacy development and is inextricably linked to topic knowledge and
academic achievement in immersion (Eskey, 2005; Met, 2008b). Research shows that
children must have vocabulary knowledge of approximately 95% of a text for
comprehension and 97% of a text to be able to use context clues to derive the meaning of
an unknown word from a text (Met, 2008b). In immersion classrooms, teachers must
make every content lesson a language lesson by explicitly teaching words that are
important because of their frequency and relevancy for students becoming mature
language users (Met, 2008b).
In both traditional classrooms and immersion classrooms, teachers face the
significant challenge of building academic language so that students can read and write
advanced content in each subject. According to Cummins (1979), language can be
divided into two forms: social language, termed basic interpersonal communicative skills
(BICS), and academic language, termed cognitive academic language proficiency
(CALP). Used in casual settings, social language (BICS) is taught from an earlier age
than academic language (CALP), which can be used to express complexity, higher-order
36
thinking processes, and abstract ideas (Zwiers, 2008). While BICS can be attained in a
second language in approximately two years, CALP generally takes a minimum of five to
seven years. A lack of academic language is considered one of the central causes of an
increasing achievement gap between high- and low-performing students (Zwiers, 2008).
Though it is vital to recognize and reward the cultural capital of each student, teachers
must also challenge the linguistic development of each child through the development of
academic language in preparation for the instruction of advanced content (Zwiers, 2008).
Met (2008b) emphasized the importance of the language of academics for second
language learners in immersion classrooms: “At the point in their academic career where
they are expected to read and write in order to learn, students need greater proficiency in
language and literacy in order to succeed in internalizing academically rigorous
curriculum” (p. 51). She continued by explaining that spoken social language is highly
contextualized, allowing for easier understanding through the physical characteristics of a
speaker and situation. However, written academic language is highly decontextualized,
creating an added challenge in the vocabulary requirements of a student learning in a
second language (Met, 2008b).
Met (2008b) states that the most important vocabulary to teach are words that are
(1) critical to making meaning of a text, (2) high frequency in age-appropriate texts, (3)
highly useful for language learners, and (4) relevant to a particular text (p. 59). Teachers
can emphasize these words by using their voice for pausing and repetition, stopping to
define a word, or using visuals or writing the word on the board (Met, 2008b). Productive
tasks, in which students speak or write a word, can help students retain new vocabulary
more than receptive tasks, in which students simply hear or read a word. Swain’s
37
comprehensible output hypothesis (1995) suggests that students can negotiate gaps in
their linguistic knowledge through productive tasks and opportunities for output (as cited
in Swain & Lapkin, 1995). Met (2008b) defines productive tasks as class discussion,
graphic organizers, student-to-student collaboration in groups, and think-pair-share.
The cognitive flexibility and cross-linguistic transfer that bilingualism brings
assists children in seeking second language literacy. This is particularly evident in the
areas of comprehension, phonemic awareness, part of phonological awareness, and
decoding and encoding skills. In immersion settings, a child’s pre-literacy skills, such as
rhyming, syntactic knowledge, and discourse abilities, in one language have been found
to be transferable to a second language (Cloud et al., 2000; Verhoeven, 2011). In cognate
languages, research shows that the decoding skills of first and second language learners
appear to be approximately equal in the long run, due to cross-linguistic transfer from the
first language orthography (writing system) and phonology (sound systems) (Verhoeven,
2011). The development of the previous four skills in second language literacy will
naturally lead towards the development of fluency, the last of the National Reading
Panel’s five identified areas for reading development. By focusing first on
comprehension, vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and decoding/encoding, fluency will
naturally improve.
For all second language learners, the length of time and amount of exposure to a
second language influences literacy achievement (Verhoeven, 2011). Also, the
connection of reading with writing is essential for the development of second language
literacy (Cloud et al., 2009). Other school factors that improve second language literacy
include (1) languages used in the curriculum, (2) instructional approaches and methods,
38
and (3) teacher attitudes towards the attainment of literacy, such as high expectations
(Verhoeven, 2011). Purposeful biliteracy, as opposed to accidental biliteracy, encourages
second language literacy through oral language, continuous literacy instruction, elevated
minority language status, appropriate materials, authentic instructional approaches, and
connections between the two languages. Research by Martin-Beltran (2010) shows that
teachers, particularly those in two-way immersion, may encourage language development
by giving students repeated opportunities to (1) play with language, (2) co-construct
language expertise, and (3) use each other as resources (p. 272).
Much of the success of dual language immersion strands or schools comes from
the status of the minority language within the school. The minority language must be
consistently elevated and celebrated so as to match the status of English (Beeman &
Urow, 2009). Also, teachers must remember that literacy is not simply an independent,
individual process, but rather a social relationship that requires interaction between
people (Wiley, 2005). For this reason, dual language immersion classrooms, with
bilingual teachers that make learning meaningful, interactive, and useful, are the perfect
place for the development of biliteracy (Cloud et al., 2009).
39
Chapter 3
Methodology
With nearly 100 language immersion programs in four languages (Chinese,
French, Portuguese, and Spanish) and more programs and languages to come, Utah is a
recognized leader in dual language immersion. Utah has received both national and
international attention as the first state to legislate state funding for language education.
Most of the details of Utah’s revolutionary dual language immersion initiative have not
been disclosed or studied. The purpose of this project is to document the conception and
development of dual language immersion in Utah and represent the perspectives of the
state team responsible for its success.
Research
Setting a solid theoretical foundation regarding dual language immersion
education was the first step in this creative project. In Chapter 2, a literature review has
been provided to justify the demand for dual language immersion education. Information
and research provided in this literature review were heavily based on information
provided by Dr. Diane J. Tedick, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota,
through her course, CI 5670 Foundations of Dual Language and Immersion Education,
held in the spring of 2012.
Building on this theoretical framework, the focus of the project was to create a
narrative timeline and chronological history to answer the following questions:
• What specific events led to a state dual language immersion initiative in Utah?
• How have the parameters of the state model been established?
40
• Who have been the significant players in Utah dual language immersion and
what have been their individual contributions?
• What events have been pivotal in steering the progression of Utah’s dual
language immersion programs?
• How is a new language program (i.e., Portuguese) implemented as part of the
Utah state model?
Design and Development
To answer these questions, information was gathered in four ways:
• formal, structured interviews with members of the Utah team
• informal conversations with state, district, and school level experts and
teachers
• classroom observations
• collaboration from attendance at state level meetings and national conferences
After securing permission from Gregg Roberts to compile a history of Utah’s dual
language immersion programs, the project began with a formal interview of Roberts.
Over the course of the following year, several more interviews were completed with
Roberts, in addition to informal consulting for the purposes of data verification. In total,
formal, structured interviews were conducted with nine members of the Utah dual
language immersion team:
• Gregg Roberts, World Language and Dual Language Immersion Specialist,
Utah State Office of Education
• Myriam Met, former director of the National Foreign Language Center, Utah
Consultant of Curriculum and Instruction
41
• Ann Tollefson, former president of the American Council on the Teaching of
Foreign Languages, World Language Consultant
• Ofelia Wade, Spanish Dual Language Immersion Director, Utah State Office
of Education; Immersion Specialist, Canyons School District
• Sandra Talbot, Chinese Dual Language Immersion Director, Utah State Office
of Education; Program Director, USOE Chinese STARTALK
• Kaye Murdock, French Dual Language Immersion Director, Utah State Office
of Education; French Immersion Specialist, Granite School District
• Doug Finch, Former Principal of Cascade Elementary School with Chinese
Dual Language Immersion, Alpine School District; Current Principal of
American Fork High School
• Karl Bowman, Principal of Harvest Elementary School with Spanish Dual
Language Immersion, Alpine School District
• Diane Bridge, Principal of Timpanogos Elementary School with Spanish Dual
Language Immersion, Provo School District
Though not questioned in official, structured interviews, the following people
served as advisors and provided continuous information during informal conversations:
• Greg Duncan, Founder of InterPrep, Utah Consultant for Proficiency and
Assessment
• Johanna Watzinger-Tharp, Associate Professor of Languages and Literature,
Associate Professor of Linguistics, Associate Dean of Humanities, University
of Utah
• Kristin Swenson, Research Associate, Utah Education Policy Center
42
• Carolyn Schubach, Associate Director for Advanced Learning Programs,
Granite School District
• Kerrie Neu, Elementary Dual Language Immersion Specialist, Granite School
District
• Tessa Dahl, Chinese Dual Language Immersion Coordinator, Utah State
Office of Education; Chinese Immersion Specialist, Granite School District
• Blair Bateman, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Brigham
Young University
• Eliane Bueno, First-grade Portuguese Dual Language Immersion Teacher at
Lakeview Elementary School
• Silvia Juhas, Pedagogical Supervisor, Aymara Publishing
To capture Utah dual language immersion in action, school visits were conducted
at the following schools, which host programs in the identified languages:
• Alta View Elementary School, Canyons School District, Spanish
• Cascade Elementary School, Alpine School District, Chinese
• Horizon Elementary School, Murray School District, Spanish
• Lakeview Elementary School, Provo School District, Portuguese
• Rocky Mountain Elementary School, Alpine School District, Portuguese
• Silver Mesa Elementary School, Canyons School District, Spanish
• Wasatch Elementary School, Provo School District, Chinese
Beyond the people and schools explicitly listed, I have collaborated with
innumerable colleagues through countless meetings over the course of the last year,
including, but not limited to, the following groups:
43
• Dual Language Immersion Directors
• Dual Language Immersion Curriculum Team
• Dual Language Immersion Advisory Council
• Dual Language Immersion Research Advisory Board
• World Language Coordinators Committee
• Governor’s World Language Council
• Chinese, French, Portuguese, and Spanish Cohorts
• Portuguese Steering Committee
I have also attended the following meetings and conferences:
• Annual Utah Dual Language Immersion Institute (AUDII)
• Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA)
• STARTALK, core program of the National Security Language Initiative
(NSLI)
• F-CAP, Flagship – Chinese Acquisition Pipeline
• American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)
• Southwest Conference on Language Teaching (SWCOLT)
• Utah Foreign Language Association (UFLA)
• Utah Valley University Immersion Summit
Validation
Formal interviews were either recorded and later transcribed or transcribed in real
time during the interview. Notes from informal collaboration and observations were kept
for reference throughout the writing of the project. All meetings and conferences were
documented through detailed minutes. Relevant documents and teaching materials were
44
collected from experts and teachers including, but not limited to, instructional time charts,
proficiency and assessment documents, curriculum maps, and scope and sequence
documents. The information gathered from interviews, collaboration, observations, and
meetings was then organized into general themes and placed into a timeline.
Due to the extensive number of people that were involved in providing
information on numerous occasions over the course of a year, individually citing sources
was not possible in Chapter 4. Unless specifically cited, the reader may assume that data
was either provided by the individual being discussed, is common knowledge among
state team members, or is specific information defined by Gregg Roberts during
consultations on this project.
Conclusion
Utah’s government has invested a significant amount of time and money in the
creation of a state language initiative for dual language immersion programs across the
state. With close to 100 schools and plans for continued expansion in the future, the Utah
State Office of Education possesses a proven track record for replicating and sustaining
dual language immersion in four different languages (Chinese, French, Portuguese, and
Spanish). To many, Utah seems a surprising choice for a language initiative, especially
considering its conservative politics and landlocked position in the United States.
Knowing the history of dual language immersion and the unique series of events that led
to the creation and expansion of dual language immersion programs across the state is
essential to understanding Utah’s success.
45
Chapter 4
History of Utah Dual Language Immersion
Despite its existence in countries across the globe for many years, immersion
education did not come to the United States until half of a century ago. The roots of
American dual language immersion education stretch back to 1965 when a group of
English-speaking, middle class parents in St. Lambert, Montreal, Canada, initiated a
grassroots movement for teaching French as a second language in their local schools.
Working with scholars from McGill University including Dr. Wallace Lambert, they
proposed a program to the school board wherein their English-speaking children would
be taught, from the first day of kindergarten, entirely in French. English would gradually
be introduced beginning in second grade until sixth grade, when half of the curriculum
would be taught in English and the other half taught in French. Parents had three goals in
mind: French literacy and language proficiency, cultural appreciation, and no sacrifice of
English academic achievement. The program was successful in that it revitalized the use
of French among the younger generation and immediately encouraged duplication of its
success all across Canada (Swain & Johnson, 1997).
In 1963, Cuban parents living in Miami, Florida, helped open the first two-way
bilingual education program at Coral Way Elementary School in Miami Dade County.
The program brought native Spanish-speaking children and native English-speaking
children together into a single classroom with instruction divided between English and
Spanish (Fortune & Tedick, 2008). In 1971, the first foreign language immersion
program in the United States started in Culver City, California, with an elementary
Spanish immersion program that followed the St. Lambert model of focusing first on the
46
target language with gradual exposure to English (Center for Applied Linguistics, 2011).
Other programs slowly began to open in coastal areas and large metropolitan centers of
the United States such as California, Florida, and Washington D.C. Each of these
programs functioned as islands—occasionally with district-level support, but usually as a
single school program.
Foundation of Utah Immersion
In the fall of 1979, after more than a year of preparation, Alpine School District
opened Utah’s first immersion program at Cherry Hill Elementary School in Orem. The
idea of opening an immersion program in Utah was sparked by a family who had moved
from Maryland to Utah in the late 1970s. In Maryland, the family’s daughter had
participated in a total immersion program in French (presumably Montgomery County
Public Schools) (James Taylor, personal communication, June 7, 2013). At the
encouragement of this family, Alpine School District provided the principal with $2,000
for materials to start a total immersion program in Spanish at Cherry Hill in 1979. The
program was composed of 11 first graders and 16 second graders and was backed by
tremendous parental support (Howe, 1983). Aurora Penrod was the first teacher in the
program’s one-teacher, full immersion model, which was initially conducted almost
entirely in Spanish for the first year. Students learned to read first in Spanish with English
literacy added in the spring of the second-grade year. Student achievement was
monitored through Spanish content assessments administered throughout the school year.
The results of these tests showed that the program was not damaging the math and
reading skills of students and that students were acquiring functional proficiency in
Spanish.
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Parents were content with the progress of their students, and the program grew in
popularity among members of the community until similar programs were started in
elementary schools throughout Alpine School District including Northridge, Windsor,
Manila, Meadow, Rocky Mountain, Orchard, Foothill, and Harvest (Taylor, personal
communication, June 7, 2013). Several of the programs were started by teacher and
principal Karl H. Bowman, a native Spanish speaker from Chihuahua, Mexico who has
been an ardent supporter of Spanish immersion over the past three decades. The full
immersion model used at each of the schools meant that first grade was conducted 100%
in Spanish, with English instruction gradually introduced in Spanish/English as follows:
second grade, 90/10; third grade, 80/20; fourth grade, 70/30; fifth grade, 60/40; and sixth
grade, 50/50 (Bowman, personal communication, June 18, 2013). Teachers and
administrators in Alpine School District developed an extensive literacy curriculum
aligned to state standards for implementation at all schools in both English and Spanish.
The district also developed a series of procedures and guidelines for schools offering
immersion. The program eventually included an articulation into seventh, eighth, and
ninth grades culminating in students taking the Spanish Advanced Placement exam for
college credit (Bowman, personal communication, June 18, 2013). Alpine’s immersion
programs received significant support from professors at Brigham Young University with
additional assistance from the Utah State Office of Education.
In 1999, Alpine created a new model at Orchard Elementary School with Spanish
immersion starting in second grade as a gifted program. The change was made in an
effort to accommodate growing political pressure during the time period regarding
concerns about English language achievement (Bowman, personal communication, June
48
18, 2013). Over the more than three decades of Spanish immersion in Alpine School
District, programs would start and sometimes stop due to the transience of administrators,
teachers, and students. Finding and retaining high-quality and experienced Spanish
teachers was a consistent challenge for principals. Because they were heavily teacher
dependent, programs waned as teachers moved on and administrators lacked commitment
to the program. Similarly, student attrition caused conflict in the schools housing Spanish
immersion programs. Students often had to leave the program for various reasons, and
administrators struggled to justify classrooms and teachers dedicated to Spanish
immersion considering small class sizes in the upper grades (Taylor, personal
communication, June 7, 2013).
The successful continuation of Spanish classes for immersion students at the
middle school level varied from school to school. While some secondary schools and
teachers were deeply committed to the program, other schools failed to support these
classes with a shrinking number of secondary immersion students (Bowman, personal
communication, June 18, 2013). Increasing pressure from the state to test in English in
the early grades also disadvantaged total immersion programs, which concentrated on
Spanish early on. This pressure may have contributed to the overuse of English by some
teachers who were held accountable for student performance on English exams. By 2009,
only Cherry Hill, Orchard, and Harvest Elementary Schools would still offer total
immersion in Spanish (Bowman, personal communication, June 18, 2013).
In addition to Alpine School District, other districts created immersion programs
throughout the state. In 1999, growing concern for English Language Learners at
Timpanogos Elementary School in Provo School District led Principal Erin Sauls and
49
team members Tami Orr Heath and Ana Farias to research language education models
that could improve student achievement (Farias, personal communication, June 20, 2013).
After attending a conference in Vancouver and witnessing Canadian immersion firsthand,
administrators at Timpanogos Elementary applied for a small grant and began a two-way
Spanish immersion program in the fall of 1999. The program initially followed a one-teacher
model, but it slowly transitioned to a 50/50, two-teacher model beginning in
kindergarten, with balanced numbers of native English and Spanish speakers (Diane
Bridge, personal communication, June 20, 2013). At the beginning, Spanish and English
were divided 50/50 on a daily basis, but later the program implemented a one-week
model where students spent one week in Spanish and then one week in English.
Eventually, the program evolved into two weeks of Spanish followed by two weeks of
English. Dale Porter worked as principal from 2001 to 2004; he was later replaced by
Diane Bridge, who is principal today. Like Alpine School District, Timpanogos also
struggled with student attrition, difficulty finding qualified teachers, and articulation into
middle school. By third grade, the two classrooms always had to be collapsed into one
classroom and by seventh grade only a handful of students remained. The school also
dealt with a deep division between the community and staff who were involved in the
program and those who were not (Bridge, personal communication, June 20, 2013).
Shortly after Timpanogos started its two-way immersion program, Salt Lake
School District opened Spanish immersion at Jackson Elementary and Emerson
Elementary. Both schools offered two-way, 50/50 Spanish immersion programs
beginning in kindergarten with literacy, math, science, and social studies taught daily in
both languages. Jackson offered a traditional two-way program as a Title I school, while
50
Emerson Elementary School’s program was geared towards gifted and talented students.
With a diverse student body, one of Salt Lake City School District’s goals was that “dual
immersion classrooms bring together students from different languages, racial, ethnic,
and socioeconomic backgrounds [and] allow students to learn firsthand about cultures
that are different from their own” (Salt Lake City Schools website). The district set strict
time requirements for literacy instruction in each language, committing that English
Language Learners would be reading on-grade-level in their native language and in the
target language by third grade or they would be offered additional language arts time
through differentiated instruction.
After working as principal of Timpanogos Elementary School in Provo School
District, Dale Porter later relocated to St. George and started Spanish immersion at Dixie
Sun (formerly Dixie Downs) Elementary in Washington School District. Despite some
resistance from a few board and community members, Porter saw dual language
immersion as an opportunity to improve student achievement at the Title I school, which
had high rates of mobility and a high population of native Spanish speakers. In January
2006, the school board approved a plan for Dixie Sun to begin two-way, 50/50 Spanish
immersion through a whole-school model. Acting as a magnet school, Dixie Sun became
the first whole-school immersion program in the state when it officially began in the fall
of 2006.
For the 30 years between 1979 to 2009, Utah’s immersion programs were
established as the result of an educator or parent group who went to the local school
board and advocated and fought for Spanish immersion. Programs were supported by the
local communities through grassroots efforts, which often lacked significant financial
51
resources and professional development. Though there was some level of collaboration
between the immersion schools, individual teachers and principals were often burdened
with the significant responsibility of creating curriculum and implementing immersion
without a network of support (Bowman, personal communication, June 18, 2013).
Gregg Roberts and Granite School District
With no precedent of state legislated language immersion programs, Gregg
Roberts is widely acknowledged and credited as the visionary who made Utah’s dual
language immersion programs what they are today: a massive network of standardized,
state-sponsored programs following a research-proven model that is both replicable and
sustainable. A long-time resident of Utah, Roberts was a student of history, French, and
comparative literature who traveled extensively across the globe while he owned and
operated a world travel business. With fifteen years of teaching experience, primarily in
French, he started working as the World Language Specialist in the Granite School
District offices in 2002. Colleagues state that because Roberts did not follow the
traditional path for educational administration, he had an innovative spirit and a unique
ability to think outside of the box. Roberts’s interpersonal skills allowed him to build a
network of trusted advisors and experienced language teachers on whom he would later
rely as he was building the state-wide language program. With political savvy and a gift
for networking, he also knew how to bring people together from all sectors—politics,
business, and education—to create broad foundational support for language education in
Utah. Using this support, he would go on to create the first state initiative for dual
language immersion in the nation, providing state funding, professional development, and
standardized curriculum for nearly 100 schools.
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At the time of Roberts’s appointment as Granite School District’s World
Language Specialist in 2002, the district did not have language instruction at the
elementary level but was interested in starting a program. They began by researching
established immersion models around the state and visiting schools in Salt Lake City
School District, which included an immersion program for gifted and talented students at
Emerson Elementary School and a traditional Spanish immersion program at Jackson
Elementary School. They also headed to David School District, where Ofelia Wade was
one of two principals who had recently started organizing new 50/50 model programs.
Ofelia Wade and Davis School District. Originally from Cuba, Wade grew up in
Miami, Florida, and attended Coral Way School, the pioneering two-way bilingual
program that was developed by Cubans in Miami to help their children maintain Spanish.
In 1987, after several years as a classroom and special education teacher and reading
specialist, Wade became an elementary school principal in Davis School District with a
deliberate mission to make language education available during the school day. She
began by purchasing a television program to teach fifteen minutes of Spanish a day and
later developed before and after school programs in Spanish. In 2003, Wade became
principal at a new school in Farmington called Eagle Bay Elementary. When Craig Poll,
assistant superintendent of Davis School District, asked if any principals would be
interested in developing a language program, Ofelia Wade and Principal Becky Hunt
from Sand Springs Elementary in Layton were the only two to respond.
In 2004, Poll, Wade, and Hunt began their search for a language education model
by visiting a Spanish program at Rocky Mountain Elementary School in Alpine School
District. They were excited to see Spanish immersion in action; however, they felt that
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the one-teacher model was poor as they witnessed excessive code-switching between
English and Spanish, which they felt resulted in a lack of student proficiency. Following
the visit, Hunt and Wade immersed themselves in research and began calling language
educators from all over North America. Since the 1965 St. Lambert program, Canada had
become an international leader in language immersion, with significant research coming
out of McGill University and French immersion programs from coast to coast. Across the
United States, programs were beginning in foreign languages like Spanish and French
and indigenous languages like Ojibwe. Programs continued to be islands— they were
heavily dependent on individual teachers and district specialists who were passionate
about immersion education, yet they often lacked the infrastructure to be replicable and
sustainable.
Though programs in the United States lacked state and federal government
support, organizations such as the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), headquartered
in Washington, D.C., were conducting research and encouraging language education
across the country. Officials at CAL directed Hunt and Wade to the Center for Advanced
Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) at the University of Minnesota, widely
accepted as one of the leading research institutions for immersion in the United States. At
the same time, legendary immersion researcher, Fred Genesee, from McGill University in
Canada, recommended that they contact Tara Fortune, the Immersion Projects
Coordinator at CARLA.
Tara Fortune played an instrumental role in coaching Hunt and Wade through the
process of starting a program: opening the world of immersion literature to them, setting
up site visits, and guiding them as they created a one-year plan and a formal proposal to
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be presented to the district school board. After a year of planning that included visits to
other immersion schools across the country, they had a final proposal that outlined a
50/50 model program that would be implemented at two schools in Davis School District.
In this 50/50 model, students would spend half the day in an English classroom with an
English teacher and the other half of the day in a Spanish classroom with a Spanish
teacher. The school board approved the proposal in 2005, and the district threw its
support and trust behind Hunt and Wade. From the beginning, Hunt and Wade knew that
they wanted to implement the 50/50 immersion model. They did not feel that their
community would accept the 90/10 model because parents would be concerned about the
development of English language literacy. The school board agreed and provided them
with $20,000 to continue developing their program during the planning year.
Site visits to immersion schools across the country helped inform Hunt and Wade
in the development of the program. They went to Minnesota several times to visit
elementary schools and classrooms, as well as to attain information regarding the model
and pedagogy from CARLA. They also took district officials with them to visit the CAL
headquarters in Washington D.C. and Francis Scott Key Elementary, another Spanish
immersion school in Arlington, Virginia. Visits and research informed them as they
started creating a scope and sequence and matrix of language skills, developing lessons
with a template emphasizing language objectives, and translating the district math
program into Spanish.
Pilot Programs Launch. It was during this planning period that Gregg Roberts
visited Wade at Eagle Bay Elementary School as part of a series of visits to immersion
schools throughout Utah. Roberts was excited about the possibility of starting immersion
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in Granite School District and was deeply impressed by Wade and the team of educators
who had been involved in writing lesson plans and translating materials. During the
2005–2006 school year, Wade and Hunt had organized a public relations campaign to
make their community aware of the new program. Cultural programs with performances
and food were held at the school, and Tara Fortune came to give a presentation to parents
regarding immersion research and practice. After two years of intense research and
planning, Eagle Bay Elementary and Sand Springs Elementary each launched a
kindergarten and first-grade program in 2006 with enough in-boundary students to fill the
program and a handful on the waiting list. One year later, the program was a huge success
and the waiting list had exploded.
In 2006, the Granite District’s school board gave permission for Roberts to do a
two-school pilot immersion program patterned after the one that Wade and Hunt had
launched in Davis School District. After their own planning year, Granite School District
started first-grade Spanish programs at Vista Elementary in Taylorsville and at William
Penn Elementary in Salt Lake City in the fall of 2007. Each school’s first-grade program
consisted of a cohort of 55 to 58 students divided between two classrooms, with most
students coming from within the Granite School District boundaries. Neither school
district had any idea that the model that they were implementing would be replicated
throughout the state within a few short years.
State Involvement
Also at this time, a small committee composed of four world language district
specialists began meeting at the Utah State Office of Education (USOE) to discuss issues
in language education. Representatives from Alpine School District, Granite School
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District, Davis School District, and Murray School District met with state supervisors as
a committee that would eventually become the Utah World Languages Coordinators
Committee. In late 2005, the state supervisor responsible for language education left the
Utah State Office of Education, leaving an empty spot for a World Language Specialist,
but not enough funds to hire someone full-time. The USOE approached the committee
and asked who could fill the position and everyone in the room pointed to Roberts.
Roberts filled the position on a temporary basis from February to July of 2006, when he
officially began splitting his contract between Granite School District and the Utah State
Office of Education.
Soon after transitioning into his new role, Roberts received a call from the
governor’s office, requesting a meeting regarding language education. In that meeting,
Roberts met with Governor Jon Huntsman and Senator Howard Stephenson, who
suggested that French and German were the languages of the past and that Spanish and
Chinese were the languages of Utah’s future. They tasked Roberts with creating a
distance education program that would help them get Chinese and Arabic into high
schools, a program that was later written into legislation by Senator Stephenson. One of
the first meetings that Roberts conducted took place at Brigham Young University in
Provo, where he met John Rosenberg, dean of the college of humanities, who would
quickly become a supporter of dual language immersion throughout the state. Several
important players in Chinese and Arabic were in the meetings, including Dana Bourgerie,
an associate professor of Chinese, and his secretary, Sandra Talbot, who together were
responsible for BYU’s Chinese Language Flagship program.
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With significant experience working on grants as the assistant to a Harvard
professor, Sandra Talbot had quickly become much more than a secretary in the Chinese
language department at BYU. Talbot worked with the National Language Flagship Team
and BYU’s flagship team to run a grant-based program that helped non-native Chinese
speakers take accelerated and individualized Chinese classes in their specific fields, such
as medicine, law, or engineering. The National Language Flagship Team was interested
in supporting K–12 language education and had disseminated a request for proposals
(RFP) for a K–12 Chinese grant. At the time, Talbot had searched throughout the state for
someone that would be willing to work with BYU’s Chinese Flagship; however, she
could not find an interested party and the grant went to the University of Oregon and
Portland Public Schools. Though the meeting between Roberts and Talbot was too late
for the Flagship’s K–12 RFP, it began an important collaboration between Roberts and
Talbot that would impact the future of dual language immersion in the state.
Governor Huntsman and Senator Stephenson. In March 2007, Senator
Stephenson helped pass two bills that would prove critical to the future development of
language programs across the state. Senate Bill 2 officially provided $100,000 of ongoing
funding for a full-time World Language Specialist, a position that had previously been
half-time. This allowed Gregg Roberts to come to the Utah State Office of Education as a
full-time employee instead of working half time for Granite School District and half time
as a state specialist. The second bill, Senate Bill 80, provided $230,000 of funding over
six years to create the Critical Language Pilot Program for Chinese and Arabic in 20
secondary schools across Utah. As a result of Senate Bill 80, Roberts and Talbot began
launching the EdNet program in Chinese in 20 schools across the state. To run the
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program, Talbot found a charismatic Chinese teacher, Justin Lin, who taught Chinese to a
video camera in a small room in the Kennedy Center on BYU campus. The interactive
videos were then transmitted to approximately 60 secondary schools across the state so
students could learn Chinese.
With the program in full swing, Governor Huntsman’s office requested that
Roberts come back to give the governor a full update on the development of Chinese in
the state. After a presentation by the secondary Chinese students, Roberts commented to
Senator Stephenson that if they were really serious about language instruction, they
needed to start the children younger and get more students involved at a lower cost. He
explained that Granite School District and Davis School District were running immersion
programs in Spanish and that the same model could be duplicated in Chinese. Right
around this time, Roberts had also visited Michael Bacon, the Chinese Flagship Director
in Portland Public Schools, in conjunction with the University of Oregon, who had
implemented Chinese instruction through elementary language immersion.
Senate Bill 41. With the success of the secondary Chinese programs, Governor
Huntsman and Senator Stephenson were ready for Roberts to start elementary language
immersion programs. At their request, lawyer Dee Larson drafted Senate Bill 41 in 2008
to serve as a modification to the previous Senate Bill 80, also known as the Critical
Languages Program, and to establish a new, state-wide dual language immersion pilot
program. The Critical Languages portion of the bill provided continued funding for the
teaching of critical languages—defined by the federal National Security Language
Initiative as including Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Farsi, Hindi, and Korean—at the
secondary level. As designated by Section 1 of the bill, critical language courses could be
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taught by visiting teachers and assisted by fluent paraprofessionals through EdNet (the
state's two-way interactive video and audio system), through the Electronic High School,
or through traditional instruction.
Section 2 of Senate Bill 41 proposed funding for a pilot program of dual language
immersion in 15 elementary schools. Following the model of Davis and Granite School
Districts, the bill stated that the immersion program would offer 50% of the instruction in
English and 50% of the instruction in the target language, beginning in kindergarten or
first grade, with the intention of adding one grade each year. Though Huntsman and
Stephenson initially intended for the immersion programs to be in Chinese, Roberts
pushed for Spanish and French (his own second language). In the end, the bill provided a
monetary incentive to 15 schools divided among Spanish (six schools), Chinese (six
schools), French (two schools), and Navajo (one school).
During the 2008 general legislative season, Senate Bill 41, “The International
Education Initiative – Critical Languages Programs,” was introduced by Chief Sponsor
and State Senator Howard Stephenson, with Bradley Last as the house sponsor. When
Stephenson introduced the legislation, it stalled due to tensions between Stephenson and
other legislators relating to other bills. However, at the midnight hour, Stephenson and
Deputy Superintendent Larry Shumway were able to push the immersion bill through
with a unanimous vote of 75–0. The written legislation provided a total of $750,000 to
the two programs, with $480,000 designated for the Critical Language Program ($6,000
per critical language taught at up to 60 schools and $100 to $400 per student), and
$270,000 designated for the dual language immersion program, with the latter portion
allotting $18,000 to 15 schools.
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Myriam Met. With the new legislation safely in place, Roberts needed a
nationally recognized immersion expert to help craft a Utah model to be replicated in
schools around the state. Many of the important connections that Roberts had made as a
district supervisor came through his membership in the National Association of District
Supervisors of Foreign Language (NADSFL). In 2003, Roberts attended an annual
NADSFL conference as the Granite School District World Language Specialist and was
introduced to Dr. Myriam Met, the founder and first president of NADSFL. Met, known
to associates as Mimi, began her career in New York City teaching high school Spanish,
French, and Chinese, later obtaining master’s and doctorate degrees in education. She
moved to Montgomery County School District near Washington, D.C. where she
remained at the district level until 2000, when she became the acting director of the
National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) at the University of Maryland. She began
working as a language and immersion consultant in 1975, focusing solely on consulting
since she retired from the NFLC in 2009. With nearly fifty years of working with all
types of language instruction models at all levels of education, Met is an internationally
known and respected immersion educator.
Naturally, the first person that Roberts contacted to assist in designing and
developing the elementary dual language immersion program was Met, who was in Utah
for the Southwest Conference on Language Teaching (SWCOLT). She met with Roberts
and also conducted a training session in Granite School District regarding immersion for
curriculum directors throughout Utah. Met’s presentation had a strong impact on many
school districts, eventually leading toward a proposal from several school districts to
divide the legislation’s $18,000 per school among more schools to allow for more
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participation. Also at this time, Roberts visited the Navajo reservation, whose school
expressed disinterest in housing a Navajo immersion program since they already had a
FLES (Foreign Language in Elementary School) program. This meant that Roberts had
14 grants of $18,000 each to distribute; however, due to the increase in interest, 21
schools participated, receiving anywhere from $6,000 to $18,000 each. In addition to
these 21 schools, the two Spanish pilot programs in Davis School District and the two
Spanish pilot programs in Granite School District received state support.
2008–2009 Planning Year
The 2008–2009 school year was slated as a planning year with the opportunity for
administrators to travel and visit other programs throughout the United States. Two of the
most influential visits took place with the Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia and
the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. Fairfax was following a 50/50
model where immersion students would take math, science, and social studies in a target
language classroom and then be dispersed back into normal English classrooms for
English literacy. In this model, there was no English partner teacher to mentor and
collaborate with the target language teacher and also no target language literacy program.
In Montgomery County, immersion classrooms focused on target language literacy while
remaining in the target language at all times through a 90/10 model. Students did not
receive English literacy instruction and were not permitted to speak English after a
certain date, encouraging the use of only the target language in the classroom. After
debriefing, the Utah team decided to combine what they felt were the strengths of each
program. They chose to follow Fairfax’s 50/50 model but incorporate Montgomery
County’s focus on target language literacy. They also decided to create the role of an
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English partner teacher to create collaboration and cohesion between the students and
teachers involved in dual language immersion.
From the beginning, Roberts had decided that he wanted to follow the 50/50
model in Utah for several reasons. First, the model had been successfully implemented by
Davis School District and later Granite School District and came highly recommended by
Principal Ofelia Wade and the others who had seen the success of Eagle Bay Elementary
and Sand Springs Elementary students. Second, Roberts knew that English language
proficiency would always be a concern for parents, teachers, and administrators. By
keeping 50% of the day in English with a trained English teacher, students would be able
to develop their English literacy skills and receive explicit instruction in the English
language. Third, the 50/50 model involved two classrooms per grade (called a cohort),
allowing for twice as many students to be enrolled in immersion while only dedicating
one full-time employee per grade to the target language. This practicality made the
transition to the program easy and inexpensive while keeping the model sustainable with
minimal effects on the rest of the school population. Roberts felt strongly that there
needed to be consistency across the state, which meant that with a large number of
schools, the model they designed had to be highly replicable and sustainable—
characteristics that were evidenced by the 50/50 model.
The launch of the programs was set for August of 2009. From 2008 to 2009,
Roberts coordinated the planning with the assistance of Sandra Talbot. Mimi Met, who
Roberts calls “the mother of Utah dual language immersion,” became heavily involved as
a consultant in the planning period. Roberts’s vision combined with Met’s experience
allowed them to create a program that would reach a wide audience of youngsters in a
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highly effective program. Met states, “Gregg Roberts wanted to do what no one had done
before and make immersion a mainstream program, not a boutique program” (Met,
personal communication, December 10, 2012).
As a consultant, Met did not feel it was her place to make decisions in Utah.
Instead, she laid the foundation of research and brainstormed with Roberts regarding
critical decisions points: criteria for staff, finding staff, and allocating resources. Though
Met had more than 30 years of experience working with dual language immersion, she
had always worked at the district or school level. Utah was the first state to implement
dual language immersion as a state-wide, legislatively funded initiative. One fortuitous
situation, which boosted the effectiveness of immersion in Utah, was that the Department
of Curriculum and Instruction and the Department of Educator Licensing were, and
continue to be, housed under the same director at the Utah State Office of Education
called Teaching and Learning. Director Sydnee Dixon, a consistent supporter of dual
language immersion, helped prepare the way for dual language immersion across the
state as she led both departments and encouraged collaboration between curriculum
specialists and licensing staff. This collaboration helped prepare the way for accepting
foreign credentials as a pathway to licensure for international guest teachers.
Governor’s Summits. Also during the planning year, Governor Huntsman held a
series of three summits to discuss issues of importance relating to Senate Bill 41. The
first meeting was the Governor’s Language Summit, held in Salt Lake City on September
16, 2008. Keynote speakers included Governor Huntsman, State Senator Howard
Stephenson, David S. C. Chu, acting under the Secretary of Defense, and Larry Shumway
from the state superintendent’s office. Organized by Gregg Roberts, Sandra Talbot, and
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Christine Kearl (from the Governor’s Office), the meeting involved both national and
state participants and focused on the theme, “Preparing the Rising Generation of Global
Professionals in Utah.” The purpose of the meeting was to begin the conversation about
language education and its relationship to Utah’s future participation in a global economy.
Attendees included state K–12 administrators, university professors from throughout
Utah, and national world language experts.
The Utah International Education Summit, titled “Capitalizing on Strengths,
Creating New Opportunities,” was held approximately six months later on March 2, 2009,
again in Salt Lake City. Featuring Governor Huntsman and Larry Shumway as keynote
speakers, along with Christine Kearl and Vivien Stewart of the Asia Society, the meeting
was again organized by Roberts, together with Robert Austin of the USOE and Tiffany
Hall, associate director of BYU’s Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education and
Schooling (CITES). In attendance were influential K–16 educators from across the state
who discussed the logistics of implementing language immersion in every level of Utah’s
schools.
The final summit, the Salt Lake City Language Summit, focused on the need for
language skills in the workforce and was held on May 5, 2009. This third summit was
sponsored by the World Trade Center Utah, The Language Flagship, and the Salt Lake
City Chamber of Commerce, and was organized by Lew Cramer from the World Trade
Center Utah, Susan Duggan from the Language Flagship, and Johanna Watzinger-Tharp
from the University of Utah. Fifteen representatives from businesses in Utah attended to
provide their insights and ideas regarding the need for language and cultural skills in
navigating a global economy.
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Utah Language Roadmap. Together, the three summits provided an opportunity
for collaboration among attendees who were referred to as the “Governor’s World
Language Council.” Attendees included representatives from the Utah State Office of
Education and local Utah school districts, the Utah Governor’s Office, state universities,
the Utah World Trade Center, and businesses from the private sector. The purpose of the
series was to inform the development of a Utah Language Roadmap, which would serve
as an aggressive language education plan to prepare generations of Utah students to enter
a changing global economy for the benefit of Utah’s businesses, education, government
agencies, and citizens (Roberts & Talbot, 2009). Written by Gregg Roberts and Sandra
Talbot, with Christine Kearl, Johanna Watzinger-Tharp, and Lew Cramer acting as
editors, the roadmap was endorsed by the governor, state superintendent, and the Utah
World Trade Center. The roadmap synthesized information obtained through the three
summits and emphasized the need for Utah to prepare its students “with the language and
cultural skills necessary to enter and lead in a global economy” (Roberts & Talbot, 2009,
p. 2). Within the roadmap, eight languages were determined to be essential for Utah’s
economic future: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and
Spanish.
Participants in the summits made four recommendations, which Roberts and
Talbot fleshed out in the roadmap. In Recommendation 1, titled “Opening a Dialogue,”
business owners expressed a need for language skills in the following areas: marketing
and communication, client communications and public relations, customer care and
support, business development and sales, relationship building, business negotiation,
international communications, management issues and human resource management,
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healthcare, and business documentation. Businesses saw the purposes of developing
world languages as developing trust, understanding of foreign culture and context,
equipping individuals with skills for expansion overseas, and communicating
domestically with non-English-speaking Utah residents. They felt that a lack of language
skills in the workforce resulted in poor public perception in a global market, delays in
business negotiations, and loss of capital, opportunity, production time, expansion, and
account retention.
Recommendation 2, “Teaching and Learning,” defined the Utah K–16 articulation
vision as a dual language immersion program starting in kindergarten, continued study
through middle/junior high school, Advanced Placement credit by ninth grade, the option
of a third world language in high school, and higher education opportunities in world
languages resulting in advanced literacy